


The Same Three Chords

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hand Feeding, Hurt/Comfort, I really don't know how else to tag it, M/M, Slow Burn, featuring all your favorite ancient cities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2019-11-06 15:09:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 71,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17942030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: They're older than dirt-- so, too, their association. But there are some things an angel can't admit to... and it doesn't get easier with the invention of time.





	1. Prologue: Before the Beginning

    “You’re Belial’s friend.” Aziraphale greets, and then a sort of aura of embarrassment suffuses his being. ‘Friend’ is something of an awkward term-- while it’s true a lot of them spend more time with this or that other, there are angels who take offense to the suggestion that they pick favorites from among the Host. “I mean-- I’ve seen you, with Belial, I don’t know your name.”

 

    He gives it, settles at Aziraphale’s side. “I’ve seen you as well. Aziraphale, is it? I suppose so, Belial, yeah… He’s got… loads of friends. Well-- we all do, suppose.”

 

    “Yes. Of course.” Aziraphale laughs, and doesn’t sound wholly convincing.

 

    “I don’t actually talk to that many of the others.” He admits, sensing a kindred spirit. They all ought to be kindred spirits, and they aren’t, and he hungers for it. “Sometimes with Belial’s other friends. Well, some of them. But he gets up there when he socializes, I mean… I never know what to say to that lot. Upper orders. Gets awkward.”

 

    “Yes, but you’re--”

 

    “Smack dab in the middle.” He shrugs. They both laugh, one of those little social laughs from two people unsure of what to say or who to be with each other, a problem which has existed since there were first enough beings wandering around to allow for social awkwardness.

 

    “Better than me. Not that-- I mean, ‘better’.” Aziraphale shakes his head. “Of course I’m not at all envious. I rather think I’ll like where I’m at.”

 

    “Maybe _I’m_ envious.” He grins, and it makes Aziraphale go all nervous again, and when he’s nervous he _glows_.

 

    “Of course you aren’t!” He titters. “No one is! I mean-- no one is, really, are they?”

 

    “I don’t know. I think what you’re meant to do sounds interesting.”

 

    “Yes, but-- but you don’t envy me! I mean… Envy, that’s-- that’s a _big one_.”

 

    There are Big Ones, though not yet much understanding of what they mean. They’re more for humans to worry about, and humans haven’t come about yet. The angel is very fuzzy on what exactly envy _is_ , but he likes the way Aziraphale laughs nervously and shakes his head, the way his curls move when he does, the way he glows with embarrassment and a strange sort of pleasure. There’s not much to be interested _in_. But Aziraphale isn’t like other angels, and it makes him interesting, to an angel who also feels as if he’s not quite like the Host.

 

    That’s what he likes about Belial, too, and his other friends, they’re not like the others, and it makes him feel a bit more at home. It’s Belial who put the idea of Envy in his head, that it was something an angel was capable of feeling, even if he’d brought it up as a joke, to Aziraphale. He doesn’t think he does envy him, he’s not sure if he’s actually capable. They’d been told what the Big Ones were, but they’d also been told it wasn’t likely to be a worry-- at least not for now. They’d been told these things were bad, but that no one had ever felt them, so it was really like they didn’t exist.

 

    One of Belial’s other friends, a real higher-up type, had asked the two of them once, what they thought envy was like, and wrath, but none of them really had an idea, and he didn’t ask about the others. Personally, the angel thought sloth sounded preferable to boredom, but he didn’t think he was really guilty of it. He was more eager to have something real to do than he was itching not to care about it.

 

    He hasn’t felt anything sharp enough to be Envy, only interest in things that weren’t his. He’s interested in Aziraphale’s coming Duty, he’s interested in what humans will be. He certainly hasn’t felt anything like Wrath. At most, he’s felt occasional irritation, but that’s all. So he supposes he’s fine.

 

    “Well.” He touches Aziraphale’s arm. “I’ll see you, Aziraphale.”

 

    His energy’s a gentle hum, Aziraphale. Soft and warm as light. If he were to open the metaphorical gate between their beings, and let them flood each other, it would be stronger, he supposes. He’d have the whole sense of his essence. It seems forward, somehow, too much. He never does it like that. He never really wants to be so open. He’s open just enough, he thinks.

 

    “Yes, I expect. I’ll see you.” Aziraphale nods, and returns the gesture, and smiles up at him when he stands to go. He says his name, a bit as an afterthought and yet it sounds musical on his tongue. It sounds friendly.

 

    There’s quite a lot of eternity to run into each other in, after all, as the universe is prepared and made nice for the coming Creation. What there is of Creation so far is not much, conversation passes the time. He seeks Aziraphale out for it often.

 

    “Do you think it’s too like Pride to wonder about what you’re like? About how everyone perceives you as your own thing, separate from the Host?” He asks him, perhaps their third or fourth meeting. Pride had come up recently, with his other friends, the next Big One they’d tried to puzzle out, tried to ask themselves if anyone had ever been prideful or if angels were capable of it.

 

    “No… no, I don’t think.” Aziraphale frowns in concentration. “Not just to wonder how everyone sees you. Not that any of us are separate, of course, but I mean… we’re all different parts of the whole. I suppose it’s natural to hope that one’s brothers see one as a good part. Though of course I can’t see why they wouldn’t!”

 

    “You sound worried.” A grin, sly and sinuous and not unkind.

 

    “Preposterous.” He glances away.

 

    “You shouldn’t be.” And the other angel reaches up, and touches Aziraphale’s hair simply because he wishes to feel it, because he wishes to know him as something separate. Not a second cog in a machine, but a being. Like himself, but not himself. “You’re a good part. You’re better than a good part. You’re-- you. Isn’t that worth something? That you’re you and I’m me?”

 

    “I don’t know. It sounds rather dangerous.”

 

    “Lucifer doesn’t think so. He reckons a lot of things are all right, it’s just how murky the rules are right now. Makes you worried about too much. But some things can’t be wrong.”

 

    “O-oh… well, if _Lucifer_ thinks, he-- he’s very close, he’s-- He’d know, I expect. Michael thinks nearly everything might be a sin, but of course, he’s meant to smite demons, so he’s on the lookout for sins.”

 

    “What’s a demon?”

 

    “I don’t hardly know.” Aziraphale shakes his head. “Expect they’ve not been invented just yet. I’m told it’s nothing for me to worry about now. I suppose I’ll be updated if it becomes pertinent. It’s not my duty to smite them, particularly, but they must be wicked.”

 

    “Is it wicked to want to know what people think of you, though?”

 

    “No-- no, no, I suppose not, not-- not just to _wonder_ , if you’re not hung up on it. I don’t think wondering is Pride. Only if you let the answer go to your head, maybe.”

 

    “What do you think I’m like, Aziraphale?”

 

    He gets that nervous sort of shimmer about him. He looks away a moment, and then their eyes meet.

 

    “Mostly just like anyone.” He says, and it hurts a little to hear, when he doesn’t feel like anyone. He’s aware he and Belial look rather alike, but Aziraphale is cut from the same mold as any other Principality, and still he knows him. Sees him as his own person! “But your eyes are like starlight. You shine a little more.”

 

    _Starlight_. He does like that, though he doesn’t think the feeling it brings out in him is Pride. It is pleasure, but not Pride. There didn’t used to be starlight, there used to be just Light and that was that. Now there is and it’s a bit more special, he thinks.

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t ask, but he thinks he wants to. He leans in, knees and wings knocking together gently, and he basks in the essence of everything that Aziraphale is, was, and will be. He opens himself to it this time.

 

    “You _smell_ of things that don’t exist yet, and still they smell ancient… and there’s a taste in my mouth I don’t know, and… and _softness_ , and _warmth_. And fire.”

 

    “The color green.” Aziraphale hums. “It’s all about you. And _wine_ \-- oh, funny, I don’t know what wine is, but I can taste it when you-- And the feeling of flying fast and low to the ground…”

 

    “You’re _Mercy_.” He whispers.

 

    “You’re--” And Aziraphale draws back, suddenly, and something cold slithers into the space he used to fill. His silvery eyes are wide, his perfect teeth worry at a perfect lip. “You’re just like _me_. Oh, imagine, you being like me! I don’t know what to do with that… But it doesn’t make me proud, just… Is it nice? It’s nice. I think so. Because we all ought to be alike in ways! So that’s Right, then, that’s as it should be, you and I, alike a bit.”

 

    He nods a great deal as if trying to convince himself.

 

    “I don’t feel proud, either.” The other angel agrees. No, it was foolish to worry about Pride. He feels something very different from what he thinks Pride is, something in him counter to it and another thing in him…

 

    His friends don’t quite know how to define sins which no one has ever felt before. None of them can understand what Greed is, and after a rather circular argument, they’re forced to let it go.

 

    Gluttony, an angel he doesn’t know asserts, is when you want to devour a thing. It sounds a bit fruity to him-- he knows what devouring is, as a concept, but it’s a bit strange when nothing yet exists that needs to. Gluttony, he takes it to mean, is devouring a thing you don’t need to devour, just because you can, but there’s nothing in Heaven he can imagine wanting to devour. Tasting, yes-- if there were things to taste. Out of curiosity, and perhaps there would be pleasure in it. There would be pleasure in finding that thing, that earthy-floral-bright-warm-sweet thing he’d tasted without tasting, once. Knowing what it is and knowing what it would feel like on his tongue and to understand what it would be like to swallow it and have it in him. But while too much curiosity isn’t smiled upon, it seems a different thing from Gluttony.

 

    “Lust is just Gluttony but instead of devouring a something, it’s a someone.” Another strange angel laughs, another of Belial’s growing horde of new friends.

 

    “That’s not right.” Someone argues.

 

    “No, I think so, because it’s definitely a Big One to eat somebody, that’s a sin.” Another nods.

 

    “Well _I’ve_ never wanted to devour somebody, I don’t see why anyone would.” The second makes a face.

 

    They’re all laughing over the improbability of it, and the ease of avoiding that particular sin, but for one of their number in particular, there is a chilling understanding. They have the word ‘devour’ and they have a concept for it, but they don’t know what it is to feel it, to want these things. They don’t know how it feels.

 

    But that taste he wants is in Aziraphale, _is_ Aziraphale, and when he looks at him sometimes, he has the urge to put his mouth against him somehow. Sometimes even his teeth. Not to _hurt_ him, not to _devour_ him, but it’s not like any of _them_ know what Lust is, anyway, when they’ve not felt it. They laugh because they haven’t hungered for another before.

 

    The next time he sees Aziraphale, after that, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

 

    He sits at a careful distance, but Aziraphale relaxes in towards him, not so far as to lean against him or reach out, but enough that their legs sort of bump together.

 

    They chat about the state of things, and he’s uncomfortably aware of this awful thing sitting inside him now. The desire to reach out and _taste_. He opens himself as fully as he can to the wholeness of the Host and tries to find the single thread that is Aziraphale in all of it, until a laugh pulls him out of it.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Nothing. You were… you were _basking_. It was… Right, I suppose.” Aziraphale fumbles, at a loss to explain why it should please him to witness. They all lose themselves in it now and then, usually as part of singing praises. That’s normally when Aziraphale does do, at least. It’s rarer to see someone just lie back on his elbows, tip his face back, close his eyes, and… sink into it.

 

    “I suppose it always is.” He says, though he doesn’t know Right anymore. He knows Want. He wants to know what the taste is that he’d found in Aziraphale’s very essence, and he wants to know the taste of Aziraphale’s mouth, even if it is nearly indistinguishable from any of the angels in his Sphere.

 

    They return to the topic at hand, though there aren’t many topics, really. Having run out of things to say, Aziraphale is forced to regurgitate the opinions he’d heard from Michael and Gabriel, who had really had the same opinion, which he had to figure was more correct than his own if they agreed on it.

 

    “Are they your friends?” The other angel asks.

 

    “No. I don’t really have ‘friends’.” Aziraphale shakes his head, then stops and turns. His eyes are as blank and terrible as any of his rank, but there is an uncertain warmth that fills the space around him, and an expressiveness to his brow that would be smooth in any other. “Unless-- I mean, if _you_ \-- if _we_ were friends.”

 

    They can’t be, of course. For one thing, Belial teases him for slumming with a Principality, and he does so in front of all their other friends-- well, Belial’s friends, but they seem to like him well enough, and Lucifer is among them, and sometimes he reaches out and touches him gently and smiles, and for all he doesn’t care for rank, it feels good to be recognized by one so close to the top, and anyway…

 

    And anyway, he’s been _tainted_. He’s been corrupted, he can’t touch Aziraphale with that stain on him. Not when he seems to be the target of this unwanted thing.

 

    “Of course we’re friends.” He smiles easily. It is, he realizes, a _lie_. He’s never lied before-- no one has. Not that he knows of. He always thought it would be impossible to, but he’s done it. He’s smiled as if nothing was wrong, and he’s hidden his feelings, even though it could hurt Aziraphale to do it, he’s _lied_.

 

    He is, officially, the worst angel.

 

\---/-/---

 

    He is, as it turns out, not the worst angel.

 

    That part, he discovers at one of those impromptu salons, when he’s telling two of Belial’s friends to lay off of the Aziraphale thing, because they’re all part of the Host, after all, so he should be friendly with anyone as easy as the next.

 

    “I don’t know if it should be that way.” Says Lucifer, and he _realizes_.

 

    It takes some time to work past the massive wall in his brain saying it can’t be. Lucifer’s the _best_ of them. He’s the one who’s been educating the rest of them to further understanding of the whole sin business. The Big Ones. All the things they didn’t really understand.

 

    “I mean, some of us are better than others. That’s fact.”

 

    It is, but it sounds wrong when it comes from the guy who’s better than you are. It sounds… _Proud_.

 

    “And some of us are smarter.” He extends a nod to the lesser of them. “We understand things. We know our worth. We know how hard we have worshiped and worked, do we not?”

 

    “Oh, sure, but they do in the Third Sphere, too. Or, they will. ‘S difficult, I imagine, because they’ve all got Duties to do with Man.”

 

    “ _Man._ And what good is he?”

 

    “Dunno. Haven’t seen him yet. Hasn’t been made up, it’s all still… percolating.”

 

    “Do you know He will love Man more than He loves us?”

 

    “Oh, that doesn’t seem right.” Belial says quickly. “We’ve been working all this time!”

 

    Aziraphale, he knows, is meant to deal with Man. Is, he knows, excited to. He doesn’t so much know what Man will be like, neither of them do, but… he thinks he _Envies_ him. He’s not sure whose love he envies Man more, and that’s _terrifying_.

 

    “He’s making Man a _garden_ to live in, where he never has to toil at all.” Lucifer adds, to much muttering. Some of the muttering sounds like Wrath.

 

    “I’d like to live in a garden.” One among them says, before he can stop himself, in tones which are wistful and longing.

 

    “Wouldn’t you?” Lucifer smiles, and touches his cheek, and nods approvingly.

 

    He swallows. “I think I would. Only-- Does it count for Man?”

 

    “Does what count?”

 

    “Sin. The Big Ones.” He asks desperately, envying Man more than ever if the answer is no. “Could he become irrevocably corrupted, if he did? Too impure to love?”

 

    He wishes, more than he’s ever had to wish for anything, to be some new kind of creature, one that couldn’t be tainted by the things he’s felt.

 

    “You’re asking the _important_ questions.” Lucifer purrs. “Of course they _could_ … but only if they understood. You see, we were _told_ , weren’t we? But Man won’t be. Does that seem fair?”

 

    It doesn’t, but he wonders if he only cares it’s unfair because he’s already in the position of knowing what the Big Ones are, and it’s too late. In the core of his being, he’s sinned. They all have, haven’t they? All his friends-- except one.

 

    He leaves each clandestine meeting feeling a new thing. _Sick_.

 

    They plan to leave, and so he plans to leave with them. He hasn’t got much choice-- to stay is to taint the holiness around him, isn’t it? Now he’s part of this group, now he’s let sins ferment inside him, he’s got to go with them. Will Heaven even let them leave? Of course they’d have to… even if not to Earth to live in a garden, Heaven would have to let them go _somewhere_. Heaven won’t _want_ them, sitting about feeling Pride and Wrath and Envy and Lust and all the rest. And it’s only a few of them.

 

\---/-/---

 

    It’s not only a few of them. Lucifer’s had small groups here and there, it’s so _many_ of them, and they’ve been told to anticipate a fight.

 

    He goes to Aziraphale.

 

    “If there’s a fight soon, stay well out of it, all right?” He says. “That’s what I’m going to do. Leave it to Michael’s lot.”

 

    “A fight?” Aziraphale laughs. “What _with_? Dear, you shouldn’t worry, nothing’s been made that’s dangerous to us. Unless… is it demons? Because they have been talking an awful lot in the Third Sphere about when we’ll see any of those.”

 

    “What? No.” He makes a face. He still doesn’t know what a demon is. “If there’s a fight between-- between other angels.”

 

    “I don’t think we can.”

 

    “If you’re wrong and I’m right, then don’t get involved.”

 

    Aziraphale nods hesitantly. “Unless I’m told, of course, I would _never_ \-- But you’re worrying over nothing, none of us would.”

 

    “Maybe. But…” He shrugs, and lays his hands to either side of Aziraphale’s neck, and looks into his eyes. He lets the door to half of him slide open, he lets Aziraphale pour in. The taste of that earthy-floral-bright-sweet nothing-else thing, the scent of things no one has known. The warmth and the heat and the softness and the steel of him. The terrible Mercy so great it _hurts_ to think of its being betrayed.

 

    But he’s the one betraying him.

 

    “How… how are you doing this?” Aziraphale whispers, touching his face. “I feel all of you, but you’re hiding the truth from me. How?”

 

    “I don’t know. Goodbye, Aziraphale.”

 

    Aziraphale frowns. No one has ever said ‘goodbye’ to him before. No one has ever said ‘goodbye’ at all. His wings furl around the two of them for a moment, knock into the other’s a bit, before he tries the word out for himself, and he folds them away again.


	2. Grant My Love a Pardon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Beginning...

    He doesn’t fight. He runs.

 

    He finds the garden, somehow. Crash-lands in a tree, and for the first time in existence, loses consciousness.

 

    When he wakes, something is _wrong_.

 

    He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, but he is no longer remotely in the image of his Creator, nor is he in the image of any other angel. He is…

 

    Some new kind of creature.

 

    Be careful what you wish for.

 

    He coils around and clings to the tree, and _aches_. He looks for the Host, and doesn’t find it. Panic fluttering inside him, he looks for his Creator.

 

    Nothing.

 

    The cold of separation sears at him down to his bones. His whole body aches. It’s long moments before he can even take stock of himself, and the light changes as he tries to wait it out.

 

    He’s… he’s something long. A twisty and bendy thing. He has limbs, but barely-- they’re tiny, scrawny things, compared to the immense length of him. He’s all neck, or he’s all tail, or he’s something. He’s not what he used to be.

 

    The light changes and then it goes away completely, and he clings tight to the tree he’s in and asks desperately for it to come back, over and over, until it does. It’s such a bles-- such a relief, and he climbs upward through the tree-- finds it very easy to move through the tree, in fact-- until he can feel the light on him. It’s warmer than no light, but then… he’s beginning to realize that he’s _always_ been warm, before this, before now. And now he isn’t at all. He’s only warm where the light touches him, and even that isn’t proper warmth, isn’t the warmth of H-- of G-- isn’t the warmth he knew.

 

    He searches his memories, but only a little. It’s painful to try. There are things he knows-- what he looked like, what he was, what he’d been called, but whenever he dwells on a thing he knows about Before, it’s like a cold fire, speared into him.

 

    Twice more, the light disappears completely, and returns, before he understands that it’s a pattern, that it’s going to come back, that it’s…

 

    Safe?

 

    He leaves his tree, skirting around a couple of other creatures, he watches Man, but he retreats from everything, when it only leaves him feeling lost. The trees, the flowers, the garden itself, he likes all of that. The pain is new and he hates it, but when he’s feeling the light on his skin through the leaves of a tree, he relaxes slightly out of the tightly-wound mess that he’s become.

 

    Watching things in the garden, once he’s able to relax, is _interesting_. He doesn’t think things were very interesting, Before. He doesn’t search his memories much, but he thinks it’s accurate to say he was often bored, often waiting for something to do, or waiting to be able to talk to someone worth talking to, or just… _waiting_. But here, things happen. Animals play, and Man plays with them, and names them, and talks to them. The animals seem to naturally give him a wide berth, except for a few birds-- he can’t help thinking of them as particularly stupid creatures, if everything else has the good sense to avoid whatever twisted beast he’s become, but he likes them, he’s grateful for them. For the soft voices, the soft shapes of them, their soft white feathers. So docile he could reach out and _touch_ … and the birds are so warm when he does.

 

    Sometimes, he doesn’t see much of anything, and yet it’s still interesting. The more he gets used to what he _is_ , the less he feels the intensity of his pain, though the cold is still there, the aching emptiness where something vital was cleaved from him, where the Host once was.

 

    He’s just settled into his new existence, moving from tree to tree, flickering his tongue out over the flowers to drink in the sweet scents of them, deftly navigating the arboreal environment-- if not so deftly navigating life on the ground, where he worries about being trod on by one of the animals-- and learning to enjoy the company of birds, when he sees Aziraphale.

 

    It hits him sudden and hard, _Aziraphale_ , he _knew_ Aziraphale. He knew him Before! He can’t think back, can’t try to remember more on purpose, but he does know him.

 

    Aziraphale is much smaller, in the garden, he thinks. His halo has dimmed to something soft, just about the head and shoulders, it isn’t the full glow he’d had about him, up there. His wings he holds drawn in close to the body. He walks as if he wants desperately not to disturb anything. Watching him _aches_ , deep in the place where the Host is no longer tied to him. A part of him wants to call out, but something else stops him. He watches Aziraphale walk past where he can see him, and he lets his head dangle down from the branch where he’s lying, and he _mopes_.

 

\---/-/---

 

    The garden is nice. Aziraphale’s not entirely sure what he’s meant to be doing, yet. Well, nothing, until he’s told, but… The garden is nice. The animals are _delightful_. He mostly avoids the Man, Adam, who found him so frightening the first time, and he’s toned it down, but he’s so afraid of terrifying him again. He’d been so skittish even when Aziraphale told him not to be, and he’d wound up sitting there hugging a wolf for hours just to calm down, the poor thing…

 

    He explores the place fairly thoroughly, over the course of a couple of days, before he sees the demon.

 

    He understands now, a terrible understanding, what demons are and where they come from, and why he had never seen one before the Fall.

 

    He ought to hate it, perhaps he even ought to destroy it, and yet… it looks so…

 

    _Sad_.

 

    Hurt.

 

    Demons, or at the very least pre-demons, demons-in-the-offing, had been responsible for so much pain… They had injured so many. They’d even destroyed some. He’d put Michael’s arm back on three times, and failed to heal a few of the lesser angels, who’d had more than they could take, though most had bounced back all right. Zaharel… there hadn’t been enough of him to put back together, he’d been reduced to nothingness, hadn’t even defended himself, Aziraphale doesn’t think. And others… others who were unaccounted for after the battle, the sickening knowledge that they’d…

 

    Fallen.

 

    Fallen or destroyed, he’s not sure which is worse.

 

    He doesn’t hate this demon. He pities him. He’s such an ugly thing now, and he is no longer part of the Host. The essence around him is choked in smoke and sulfur, he is… so different from the beautiful creation he ought to have been, from the wonderful thing that he was. How could Aziraphale look on him and not be moved?

 

    “Demon.” He says, his voice soft. “Why are you crying?”

 

    Its-- his-- head snaps up, his eyes go wide. Gold, with slit pupils, and they are… curiously beautiful, even if the demon is not. Aziraphale steps closer, and then stops. This, he thinks, must be a Demonic Wile.

 

    “Aziraphale?” The demon hisses, and he winces and frowns.

 

    “I don’t believe,” Aziraphale sniffs primly. “I say, I don’t believe that I have introduced myself to you, nor given you permission to speak to me with any familiarity.”

 

    A voice in his head suggests that, demons being what they are, he likely has done, before the Fall. He ignores it. He’s gotten very good at ignoring things, of late.

 

    The demon flinches back and hangs his head, and lashes his tail in a pitiful manner. “Sssssorry.”

 

    “Yes. Well. Why _are_ you crying?”

 

    “I haven’t been.” He answers, a bit sharpish.

 

    “Well… then why do you seem very much as if you have been?” Aziraphale rephrases. It’s true there’s no sign of tears, and he wasn’t making any sobbing noises. Merely an aura, a sense of it.

 

    “I could asssk you the sssame. You ssseem very much like you have been!”

 

    “I have been.” Aziraphale sits. “Not in a while, I suppose. But I did.”

 

    The demon slinks down from his tree somewhat, dangling into Aziraphale’s space, eyes wide again. “Sssorry.”

 

    “Your lot… you did a lot of harm.”

 

    “I didn’t. I promissse.”

 

    “Forgive me, but I don’t put much stock in a promise from a demon.”

 

    “I jussst left. ‘Sss why I think I’m like thisss. Punished.” He shrugs, as best he can for a being without shoulders to speak of. Aziraphale reaches up, and touches his head, feeling out the fine bumps of his scales.

 

    “Oh. But-- you _are_ still a demon. You’re no longer a part of the Host.”

 

    “Yesss.” He nods. He’d expected the touch to hurt, the way trying to remember hurts, but it doesn’t. It’s curious and strange, but not unpleasant.

 

    “Oh. I _am_ sorry.”

 

    “Don’t be. I didn’t belong there, anyway.” He says, with another shoulderless shrug. He retreats back up into the tree, but not far enough to be hidden.

 

    “Demon-- Er, you have me at a disadvantage.”

 

    “I have myssself at one. Haven’t got a name, now.”

 

    “Oh.” Aziraphale frowns. The very idea knocks the thought he’d been on the verge of voicing right out of him.

 

    “How did you do it? You changed your shape…” The demon emerges a little more again. He doesn’t think he can be what he was, but he could be… something. Something other than the rather unattractive being that he is.

 

    “Oh, yes. Well, I had frightened poor Adam, you see. I was so much bigger than he is, and he doesn’t glow at all, and even now, I’m afraid-- He doesn’t have wings, see, he’s… And his eyes are more… I’m still working on it! I don’t want to scare him, poor thing, but… for having the same basic complement of limbs, wings aside, we’re quite different, and I must have been alarming. So tall, and so… bright. So I just concentrated, really.”

 

    “Jussst… thought about it and it wasss?”

 

    Aziraphale nods. The demon squeezes his eyes shut tight, and something around him _ripples_. His head and body look _sleeker_ , his scales are smooth and black where they had been pebbled and green. He is, Aziraphale thinks, rather more beautiful than he was, though not quite _beautiful_. Not the way a heavenly creature is beautiful, but… perhaps the way an earthly one is.

 

    “I shouldn’t have taught you to do that.” He frets. “Oh-- but-- wouldn’t you have figured it out on your own if I hadn’t?”

 

    “Sssussspect I would have.” The demon says.

 

    “You’re not just saying that to be kind, are you?”

 

    “Would I do a thing like that?”

 

    Aziraphale relaxes into a grin, only a little nervous. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Demons aren’t really kind, are they?”

 

    “I don’t think, no.” He says, although he had been.

 

    “I should go.” Aziraphale rises. “I-- I certainly oughtn’t speak with you!”

 

    “I won’t tell if you won’t.” The demon grins. He has wicked-looking little fangs, but they fold back when he closes his mouth, leaving him looking as though he hasn’t got any fangs at all, and the tongue that flickers out is forked and sharp-looking, but pink. It doesn’t look poisonous. His smile, when it relaxes, looks as sweet as any snake in the garden.

 

    “It’s no secret who I speak to.” He shakes his head. “You’re terribly wicked for saying so. I expect we shan’t see each other again. I mean-- because-- if we did, I should… I should smite you, I expect. I should be supposed to smite you.”

 

    “Oh.” The demon’s head drops forward again, miserable.

 

    “Well, you’re a demon! Look, I don’t like it, either, I’ve never smote before, but we-- we would have to, wouldn’t we?”

 

    “We wouldn’t have to, if I wasn’t doing anything worth sssmiting. You’ve never?”

 

    “No.” Aziraphale’s frown deepens. “It was decided I’d be better off behind the front lines, healing the others. I’ve never smote. Or smited. Or, erm…”

 

    “Sssmitten?”

 

    “I don’t think that’s right, but I’ve certainly never done that, either.”

 

    The demon laughs. “Well… if you mussst, you mussst… but I don’t want to fight with you, angel.”

 

    “I don’t think it’s very funny. But-- well. If you don’t do anyone any harm, then I haven’t got _reason_ to.”

 

    “I’ve never _sssmote_ before, either. Promissse.”

 

    Aziraphale looks at him measuringly. He touches the demon’s chin, light, just to direct him to make eye contact. When he does, it’s unwavering. His tongue flicks out and touches Aziraphale’s retreating thumb, and that doesn’t hurt either, it doesn’t hurt either of them. They both expect, for a split second, that it might, and they both relax when it doesn’t.

 

    “Do you swear it?”

   

    “Nothing holy in me to ssswear upon. I have lied before, but thisss’s the truth. I never have taken up armsss againssst my brothersss in-- againssst your kind, up there. And I never will, againssst you, if you don’t wish it.”

 

    “Of course I don’t wish it.”

 

    “Then it’sss nothing to fret about.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    Lucifer’s gotten the hang of shape-changing more than he has, he can tell, when he sees him walking through the garden. His feet don’t quite touch the earth, and he makes straight for the tree that’s become something of a home base.

 

    “Hullo.” Lucifer greets. “Were you the one who said he wanted to live in a garden?”

 

    “Yesss.” He admits, emerging a little.

 

    “You’re welcome.” Lucifer smiles. “Have you seen that Tree over there?”

 

    There’s no missing it, really. Even if Lucifer hadn’t said it in capital letters. It’s about the most beautiful tree in the garden, and the fruit hanging from it is likewise beautiful. He can’t figure how Man’s been ignoring it in favor of everything else. The things he’s eating must be very good, to not want that one.

 

    He nods, and waits for Lucifer to elaborate.

 

    “That’s the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

 

    “A lot of ‘of’ going on in that.”

 

    “Mm. Regardless. You know what it means.”

 

    He shakes his head slowly.

 

    “If you eat from the Tree, you _Know_. About Good, and Evil. About Sin.”

 

    “I already know all that.”

 

    “Yes.” Lucifer just smiles again. “ _You_ do. Has Man eaten from it?”

 

    “Don’t think ssso. Curiousss, I thought. Looked to be better than sssome of what he eatsss.”

 

    “Huh. Well. I should think it would be a nicer home than this.” He rustles a branch. “And, as you say, the Fruit’s nothing to _you_.”

 

    He shrugs. If all it does is let you know the difference between Good and Evil, the bloom’s a bit off the rose, in his opinion. But… there are other trees and vines on that side of the garden, with other fruits, and he is rather curious to taste those. He doesn’t need to eat any more than he ever did, but tasting’s different, tasting is interesting. He’s rather run out of things to taste in his own little secret corner of the garden. He slithers down from his branch and makes his way carefully through the grass, avoiding a few large animals-- grateful when they make room as Lucifer walks alongside him. A rather larger berth.

 

    “I may come and ask a favor of you later-- erm, do you have a name?”

 

    “Not anymore.”

 

    “All right, well. I may come and ask a favor of you later, Crawly. If I have need of you. You would do a favor for me, wouldn’t you?”

 

    “I think…” He flattens himself out in the grass. “That it rather dependsss on the favor…”

 

    Lucifer laughs. It’s as beautiful as he thinks it was Before. Lucifer, like Aziraphale, only looks smaller and dimmer than he did in… up there. Somehow, though he is most certainly also a demon, Lucifer doesn’t _seem_ it. But he remembers the sick feeling that first touched him.

 

    “A little one. It won’t be hard and it won’t hurt. And… I did get you into the garden, didn’t I? I gave you everything you wanted. After a fashion. Isn’t that better than it was up there?”

 

    “Well… ‘sss not worssse…”

 

    “I’ll be seeing you.”

 

    The demon, who supposes he’s called ‘Crawly’ now, though it leaves a bit to be desired in the style department, makes his way up into the Tree.

 

    The Fruit only leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, pretty as it is. It tastes of regret.

 

\---/-/---

 

    He tastes a lot of things, when he does come down from the Tree. Grapes, which he likes quite a lot. Figs, which he likes all right, though he thinks in comparison to the grapes that figs could do with some improving. And it isn’t only fruits, either, it’s flowers. There are little strangely spicy ones, and some which don’t taste like much beyond what they smell like, and there are little sweet ones.

 

    He likes those. He thinks he prefers them to the various fruits, although the grapes are nice, just because there’s nothing _to_ them except tasting. He doesn’t really want food to sit heavy inside him, he just wants to _taste_.

 

    He’s tasting them, when a new creature comes upon him.

 

    “Oh!” It says, in a high, birdlike voice. It looks like a softer kind of Man, with hair in most of the same places and some bits rather shifted around like. Less streamlined in some places, and rather moreso in another. “What are _you_? Do you eat these?”

 

    “You don’t eat them, you just tassste them.” He says, before he can think _not_ to. He remembers how the Man had been afraid of Aziraphale, before, but this one isn’t afraid of him.

 

    “You talk!” It coos.

 

    “Er, yesss. Um… D’you want to try?”

 

    He’s not sure what else to do, really, but be polite to this new thing which also talks.

 

    It watches him suck the nectar out of one and drop the blossom to the ground, and does the same.

 

    “What are you called?” It asks.

 

    “I’m not really called anything.” He lies. ‘Crawly’ just doesn’t sound very… Well. All very well for Lucifer to call him anything as long as he doesn’t call him by his name from Before, but he doesn’t really want to introduce himself that way.

 

    “You look a bit like a serpent.” The new creature says, after a thoughtful moment. “Do you think you might be?”

 

    “I might be.” He says. He _might_ be anything. He just happens to be a demon, that’s all. Seems best not to advertise.

 

    “The other ones can’t talk. Or… they don’t. Can you _all_ talk? Some of the birds do, I mean, but none of the others. I thought the monkeys might, they look like they could! But none of the other snakes and serpents and crawly things like you.”

 

    “Er.” He says. “Um.”

 

    “I’m Eve.” The new creature pats the top of his head. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

 

    “Mutual, I’m sssure.”

 

    Eve goes on Eve’s way, he watches it talk to a few other creatures which do not talk back. He’s not sure what to make of it, exactly, as he heads back into his new Tree, where nothing ever bothers him, as nothing ever approaches it-- save one or two persistent birds, which do not peck at the Fruit, at any rate.

 

    Eve and Adam slip out of sight around some hedges, and he lazily watches a gamboling couple of wolves a moment, before the feeling of some chill presence behind him.

 

    “Oh, well _done_ , Crawly.” Lucifer whispers. “She likes you.”

 

    She. Well, takes all kinds, he supposes. “Eve?”

 

    “Yes. She’s like Man.”

 

    “Mm, ssseemsss like him, yesss. Thought you didn’t like Man.”

 

    “Oh, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t like _you_. Don’t you think?”

 

    “Sssup--” He stops himself, swallows. Concentrates very hard on mastering his tongue, which he’s had some practice with by now. “I suppose so.”

 

    “Crawly.” Lucifer says, and his tone is flat and dangerous. “You may address me as ‘my lord’.”

 

    He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.

 

    “Yes, m’lord.” He says.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “I saw a demon.” Aziraphale says, in what he hopes is a light and conversational tone. “On Earth.”

 

    “On Earth?” Michael’s brow furrows. He stares at Aziraphale a long moment and then sighs. “Do straighten _up_.”

 

    Aziraphale gives an embarrassed little cough, and regains the three feet of height he’d taken himself down, allows the halo of light around him to shine to its usual fullness, his wings unfurling to a comfortable position.

 

    “Sorry.” He says. Somehow, though Michael does not-- technically speaking-- outrank him, he always feels a bit like he _ought_ to. Michael just has the _bearing_. Aziraphale is fairly certain that in a purely technical sense, he could pull rank on Michael if he needed to, but in practice it just doesn’t work out that way. “Erm, yes. On Earth.”

 

    “Not in the garden?”

 

    “Ah… garden-- garden-adjacent, I would say? Thereabouts. Near the east gate.”

 

    “Did you smite it?”

 

    “Ah. Aha. Well.”

 

    “Oh, nevermind, I’ll go down and do it.”

 

    “No! I mean-- I sent him off and told him there was certainly a smiting in for him if he stuck around!” He says quickly. And… isn’t it true? He’d said he would, even if he went back on it a bit… “I think I can give him a good thrashing if I had to, he’s not a very large demon. Not very, not very powerful. But it didn’t seem sporting, you know. Doing it right off like that.”

 

    “We’re not _sporting_ with demons. Do you remember what they did to us? Do you remember Zaharel? He was a _scorch mark_.”

 

    The reminder stings. Suddenly the loss is as fresh as the first time he’d sunk himself into the Host and felt a thousand severed threads. Those he’d seen fade from existence, and all the things he hadn’t seen, on the battlefield… Some threads felt as if they’d been cut, others torn, but all…

 

    All gone.

 

    “I saw it happen, you know.” Michael continues. “I saw him blasted into nothingness. Terrified of those _things_ that dared to call themselves the same as us. Dared turn their backs on the Host and still pretend to be our equal. He was _shaking_ , Aziraphale. He died afraid.”

 

    “I know.” He whispers. “But this one, he was so small, I didn’t think it was any harm to…”

 

    “Aziraphale, I don’t care if you think or not. In fact it’s probably best you don’t. But if you see a demon, either you smite it, or you call for _me_.”

 

    “Of course, yes, well… I’ll be sure to call you if I’m ever in over my head. But I really don’t expect it shall be a problem. I, er… showed it a bit of, ah… you know. The old angelic might and all. He seemed very disinclined to get into it with me.”

 

    “Just see that he doesn’t cause problems, or you’ll be responsible.”

 

    “Yes, of course. I’m sure he won’t.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    “Hullo, Eve.” Crawly greets.

 

    “Hullo, Serpent.” She pats his head. It’s rather… patronizing, she does it like he’s any old non-talking serpent, but… she means well.

 

    It’s not that he doesn’t like her. He likes them both! And he likes her a bit more, even if she pats him like he’s an animal. She’s curious, and she’s clever, and she’s kind. He thinks Man has the potential to be a very interesting creature, really. He likes them, he does.

 

    But Lucifer had said a favor, and he hadn’t made it sound like there was much room to say no. He’d talked about the garden and he’d talked about Hell, and he’d talked about debts, and he’d talked about how plenty of demons would love to be trusted with a favor like this, would love to be the one living in the garden.

 

    How bad could it be, anyway? It wouldn’t taste like regret, to her. He doesn’t think it would.

 

    “Would you like to take a walk?” He asks. “I’ve never had you ‘round to mine. Terribly inhossspitable of me.”

 

    He winces a little when the hiss comes back on him. He’d gotten so good at controlling it…

 

    “Do you live in _that_ Tree?” She stops short of approaching it.

 

    “I can’t quite ask you in, but I can offer you sssomething to eat.”

 

    “Best not, I think.”

 

    “Another time.” He nods, and slinks back through the grass, to slither up the trunk.

 

\---/-/---

 

    There’s no hiding anything he does from the Creator-- not that Aziraphale _would_ \-- but he doesn’t suppose he has to tell Michael anything.

 

    “What are you doing in the Tree?” He demands, because it seems he ought to.

 

    “I _was_ sleeping, angel.”

 

    “Well you’d best do that somewhere else, demon. And-- ‘Aziraphale’ is-- is fine, I imagine.”

 

    “ _Imagine_.” He rolls the word over his tongue, tasting it. “Do you now? I’m called Crawly.”

 

    “Crawly.” Aziraphale’s lips twitch into a smile, in spite of himself. “Are you?”

 

    “Well. I crawl.” Crawly shrugs, his curious shoulder-less shrug. “What do you do?”

 

    “Keep wicked little things like you away from Man.” He tuts, but he doesn’t do more than pat at the hilt of his sword the once, to make the point. He feels awkward carrying it at all, but after he’d mentioned seeing a demon, they’d told him he’d better keep it with him.  

 

    “I don’t pester them.” A forked tongue flicks out. True, it seems to do rather frequently, just as part of being the sort of creature he is, but this time it seems a pointed gesture. “And if they don’t come near the Tree, it stays that way, doesn’t it?”

 

    “Well… that sounds reasonable.” Aziraphale frowns. “You’ve lost your hiss.”

 

    “Yeah. Reckon I have.” Crawly glances away. He might have said ‘I suppose so’, or he might simply have said ‘yes’. He might have been tripped up thinking too much about it and hissed on either.

 

    “Well. I don’t know why I brought it up…” He laughs nervously. “Just… as long as you’re staying out of trouble.”

 

    “Oh, you know me.”

 

    He smiles again, and touches his side, lightly. “Well. All right. I won’t… I won’t mention this to anyone involved in the, ah, smiting. And you won’t-- you really won’t leave your-- leave the Tree to bother them?”

 

    “Angel, you have my word.” He blinks.

 

    He wonders if he’d picked the gesture up watching Man.

 

\---/-/---

 

    The thing is, Crawly supposes, he’s the only other thing in the garden that converses. Some birds can talk, but they can’t hold a conversation. Adam can only come up with so many things to say, and sometimes he just rolls over and goes to sleep.

 

    “Bit of a bore some of the time?” He asks sympathetically, when Eve comes to lean against the trunk of the Tree.

 

    “Oh, no. Not at all. He likes sleep more than I do, I think.”

 

    “I like sleep.” He knocks one of the shining and beautiful Fruits free. It tumbles to the ground in front of her. “I sssuppose it-- I suppose it’s all down to timing.”

 

    She picks it up, and then stops.

 

    “It’s perfectly sssafe.” He adds. “I’ve tried it.”

 

    “What’s it like?”

 

    “I can’t really describe it.”

 

    They talk a bit about the other creatures in the garden. When she leaves, the Fruit is still in her hand.

 

    He thinks that’s all that can be asked of him for favors. He thinks a nap sounds like a very good idea.

 

    When he wakes up, all the animals are going _mad_ , and he doesn’t see Man anywhere. He’s content to stay well out of it right where he is, until a bolt of light hits the Tree, and he experiences a sharp and terrific redefinition of ‘agony’. The spindly little limbs he’d had are gone, and all his attempts at shifting back into them are in vain. He’s experimented a bit with shape, never trying to look like he once had, mostly sticking to what he’d been stuck as for the basics, but…

 

    This is just…

 

    Punishment.

 

    He slithers his way out of the garden as fast as his belly can carry him-- which is pretty fast, he’s pleasantly surprised. He dodges a few hooved beasts and slips through the gate, running headfirst into Aziraphale’s ankle.

 

    “What did you _do_?” Aziraphale asks beseechingly.

 

    “That went over like a lead balloon.” Crawly says at the same time. He doesn’t know what a balloon quite is, strictly speaking, or lead, but he knows it’s the expression he wants.


	3. Running For to Come Out of the Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot can happen in half a year spent holed up together... even if you sleep through a good deal of it.

    “Come with me.” Aziraphale says, and he’s proper stern. Crawly slithers politely up to him, and he’s nervous about it, but Aziraphale reaches an arm down to him and he wraps himself around, sliding up until his head’s on Aziraphale’s shoulder and the length of him is wrapped all around him.

 

    “Where are we--” He begins, but then Aziraphale’s wings come out, and he can’t _speak_. They brush against him where he’s coiled about Aziraphale’s body and the Divine essence burns the way Aziraphale’s touch never has. He withdraws himself quickly and slides into the front of Aziraphale’s robes, instead of trying to hold himself up by wrapping around him, shivering.

 

    “Oh-- dear, I-- oh, I’m sorry!” Aziraphale helps to get him tucked into a sling of sorts, suddenly much less stern and commanding, a lot more like the fussy and anxious angel he half-remembers from Before. “I’m sorry!”

 

    “It’sss fine…” His body heaves, once, and he presses closer. For all that the shock of the Divine had hurt, its renewed absence is just as hard. Contact seems to be the balm-- the warmth of Aziraphale, but in a form that doesn’t sear at him. It lets him come down a little more slowly from that little hit of Heaven.

 

    It doesn’t sound to be fine, to Aziraphale. He can’t really press the point, though. He’d seen the demon, and he’d acted without thinking, and now… All he can really do is go through with it. He shall have plenty of time to lecture him about spreading wickedness.

 

    Aziraphale’s house is out of the way of the nearest town. Crowley slithers free of him at last and periscopes up to look about the place. A simple room, a small table, a lamp that’s never had oil in it, a chair. Shelves of clay tablets. Shelves and shelves.

 

    “D’you live here?”

 

    “Well… inasmuch as I live anywhere, yes. I suppose I do. Erm, you’ll be-- you’ll be safe here.”

 

    He doesn’t like the sound of that. He puts his nose to the window and tastes the air beyond the shutters. Distantly, there is a storm brewing. He can smell it before the thunder even rumbles.

 

    “A storm? Angel, I’m _touched_.”

 

    “A flood.”

 

    “Your house doesn’t seem to be on a hill.”

 

    “It doesn’t matter. My house certainly won’t flood if I don’t want it to. And I’m working very hard to preserve the written word…”

 

    “So… what, your house just won’t get wet because you don’t want it to? Too lazy to move your tablets to higher ground?”

 

    “Well, that’s… that’s the thing, there-- there isn’t any.”

 

    “You could miracle them to a house on a hill. You could miracle the house, for that matter.”

 

    “No. Higher ground. My dear demon, there won’t be.”

 

    “... Anywhere?”

 

    “Anywhere at all.”

 

    “Oh.” Crawly definitely doesn’t like the sound of that. He stills his lashing tail quickly, and looks about for a place to bed down, but there isn’t any. “Erm. Thanks.”

 

    “It’s all your fault, of course. So I don’t know why I’ve spared you!”

 

    “My fault?!” He squawks. “How is it _my_ fault?”

 

    “Spreading wickedness! Well that’s what the flood’s for, drowning the wicked! And there wouldn’t be wicked people if it wasn’t for you.”

 

    “You give me a lot of credit for the state of the world, I could hardly be so busy as to’ve corrupted them all.” Crawly yawns pointedly. “Although… That’s fair, I suppose, because of the garden… Still, they could never’ve-- There couldn’t have been so many people back in the garden as there are now! Not hardly so many at all. And they wouldn’t have been half so interesting.”

 

    “You _would_ say so.”

 

    “I _do_ say so. They had potential then, but they weren’t… _finished_ , it didn’t hardly seem. And now look at them, flourishing. Coming up with things.”

 

    “Look at them? Crawly, they’re about to die, _horribly_ , unrepentant of their sin! There won’t be many of them left! If you want to talk about _finished_ , dear boy, well this is as _finished_ as they’re going to get. You’ve taken it too far!”

 

    “Then why bring me in?”

 

    “Because it would-- because you would be-- I don’t know. Because I saw you and I felt--”

 

    “Yes?” He slithers forward, cocking his head to one side.

 

    “Because I don’t want you to die.” Aziraphale stares fixedly at his shelf of tablets. Because something in him had quickened and gone cold, when he’d seen the smiting party come by, when they’d bragged about the good works they’d done. When he’d thought about the serpent who had sat companionably beside him, who’d huddled close to him the first time that rains came… he’d been weak, then. Aziraphale had _felt_ for him, even if he had…

 

    “I don’t really need to breathe, it’s not-- _oh_. I-- I would--” Crawly shudders and slinks under the table, coiling up and resting his chin on himself. “Oh.”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “The wickedness… it’s only a bit me, you know. Hell sent its A team up.”

 

    “Yes, I know… Heaven sent ours down. I oughtn’t to have blamed you for everything.”

 

    “Well… I am a demon.”

 

    “Still. You’re only _one_ demon. And not a very-- Erm, no offense, but… When the others speak of the demons they’ve battled, I… They do sound quite a bit more _demonic_ than you are, dear.”

 

    “Suppose they are. But then, the others of your kind are quite a bit more _angelic_ than you.”

 

    “I could put you right back out.” Aziraphale says. And he _could_ , too. He won’t, but he could, so it isn’t _lying_.

 

    “Coming from me, you know, it’s as good as a compliment.” He offers, contrite.

 

    “Hmmph.”

 

    “I mean… Heaven wouldn’t be so bad, if-- That is-- Oh, forget it.” He sinks down into his coils, grumbling wordlessly.

 

    “No call to try flattery.” Aziraphale sniffs, but he doesn’t sound quite as put out as he had. “If it’s so painful for you.”

 

    It feels somehow prudent not to answer.

 

    He listens to Aziraphale bustle about, and emerges from within his own coils only after the angel has been sitting a while, stretching out to rest his chin on one surprisingly comfortable knee.

 

    Aziraphale reaches down to shove him off, and pauses, and allows it.

 

    “What are you doing?” Crawly asks.

 

    “Reading.” He answers, with the weary and pointed tones of one who’s been bothered far more than Crawly thinks is fair, he’s only asked the once.

 

    “Is it very interesting?”

 

    “It would be, if I could concentrate.”

 

    “Mm.” He falls silent, just long enough for Aziraphale to get a couple lines in. “What are you reading?”

 

    “Crawly, _please_.”

 

    “Just showing an interest. Polite, isn’t it?”

 

    “Is it? Is it, really?”

 

    “I’m just asking! Not much to do, is there?”

 

    “Well, there’s the door.” Aziraphale probably gestures, though from under the table, Crawly can’t see him do. Outside, it starts raining. He shudders and presses closer, and Aziraphale sighs, hand slipping back under the table to rest briefly atop Crawly’s head. “It’s poetry. If you’d like to come out of there, I could set some out for you to read.”

 

    “Can’t.”

 

    “... What?”

 

    “I can’t--” Thunder cracks, interrupting him, and he uncoils himself so that he can move the rest of his body closer, winding around Aziraphale’s leg a bit. “I say, really coming down now, isn’t it?”

 

    “Won’t touch the house, you’re all right. You can’t read?”

 

    “Aziraphale, I’m an enormous bloody snake, when would I have learned?”

 

    “Would you like to?”

 

    “No, no… nah, ‘s not-- I mean I’m sure I will do, eventually. I’ll get ‘round to it.”

 

    “Now’s a pretty good time, we’re stuck here.”

 

    “Couldn’t concentrate on it with all that coming down.”

 

    “You never did like the rain, did you?” Aziraphale touches his head again. “And that was when it was ordinary, this one’s a bit… erm… Yes, you’re best kept out of it, this time.”

 

    “‘Sss cold.” He shrugs, despite having even less shoulder than he once did. Aziraphale can feel the shift of him, where he’s pressed against his shin. “I’m cold enough without it.”

 

    “Oh.”

 

    “Don’t let me stop you, though.”

 

    “I’m certainly trying.”

 

    “You could… you could read it to me, if you like.”

 

    Aziraphale smiles, and starts over.

 

    The rain continues on steadily, the clouds have blocked out the sky so that Crawly can hardly tell day from night. Aziraphale seems undeterred, but once the water rises past the line of the window, Crawly feels a good deal more nervous.

 

    Besides which, even with all those shelves, they seem to be going through the written word Aziraphale has been preserving at quite the pace. When he thinks about how high the water’s risen and how long it’s going to take for it to cover _everything_ , and how tireless Aziraphale is when it comes to reading out loud…

 

    He wonders how many times they’ll go through them all, before the whole mess is done.

 

    “Maybe should try to kill some time with a nap.” He suggests, when Aziraphale makes to stand for another armload of tablets. “You know. Make the library last a little longer.”

 

    “Oh. All right. I’ve never slept, myself...”

 

    “Gathered as much.” Crawly snorts.

 

    “... What is it like?”

 

    “Isn’t.” He shrugs. “It’s nice. You… you stop feeling things for a while.”

 

    “You stop feeling things?”

 

    “Yeah. No thoughts, no pain, ‘s not cold, really… or, you ssstop feeling it.”

 

    “Do you really feel cold?” Aziraphale frowns.

 

    “Why d’you think I’ve been sitting so close to you?”

 

    “I rather thought you were afraid of the storm.”

 

    He makes a scoffing noise-- although, Aziraphale notes, the coils around his calf tighten when the thunder rumbles and a wave rolls across the top of the water out the window. It’s visible through the gaps of the shutters, rising fast and roiling with the storm, not quite touching the house anywhere.

 

    “Silly of me, I see now.” He says, not quite able to keep the amusement out of his voice. “I don’t think I’d like it, sleep… it seems very unproductive.”

 

    “There’s more to existence than productivity.”

 

    “Maybe for you. I suppose I ought to encourage you to sleep all you like, you’re not out doing ill in the world when you’re sleeping. But I’ve got a solemn duty.”

 

    “Oh, yes. Suppose it was duty, when Man ended up with your sword. I suppose it was duty, rescuing a demon.”

 

    “I wouldn’t make fun, being as you’re the demon. You can be un-rescued just as easily.” He says, but he strokes at Crawly’s head idly as he speaks.

 

    It doesn’t feel like when Eve had done it. Much as he had liked her, she’d treated him as an animal then. Aziraphale knows he’s not an animal, he just… touches him, because Crawly’s head is resting on his knee, because every so often he shivers-- purely from the cold, of course, nevermind it happens to coincide with the time when the thunder and lightning come instantaneous. It’s _soothing_.

 

    He pulls himself up to try and arrange himself on Aziraphale’s lap, grumbling at him to hold still.

 

    “I was just about to get up, what’s all this?”

 

    “You’re taking a break from reading, too, or you’ll lose my place.”

 

    “Oh! Oh, will I?”

 

    “Besides, you’ll run out of tablets, too, if you don’t. Just… sit here having productive thoughts. If you had a bed, I wouldn’t need to do this, of course. Sleeping on the floor’s miserable.”

 

    “Cheeky thing!” He scolds, but he allows it, and relaxes back into his chair. “I certainly don’t need a bed, of all the ridiculous things… and if you think I’m wasting my heavenly abilities on putting one in for _you_ , you’re sorely mistaken, my boy.”

 

    “Fine. Hold _still_ , angel.”

 

    Aziraphale huffs a bit, but does, and his lap is more comfortable than the floor, once Crawly has himself securely wound about him enough that he doesn’t worry he’ll slip off. The indignity of it would be something…

 

    When he wakes, Aziraphale’s fingers are trailing down a segment of his spine, and outside, the water is higher. There’s no line, outside the windows, only water. He shudders and presses flat against him.

 

    “How long do you normally sleep? It’s been ages.” Aziraphale says.

 

    “How long is this rain going to last?”

 

    “A while yet. I’ll take your mind off it, shall I?” He gestures to the shelves, and Crawly reluctantly leaves the warmth of his lap. The little house feels colder now it’s underwater. But Aziraphale doesn’t complain when he climbs back up onto him, when he sits back down with a few more tablets, wrapped up one leg and slouching against him, and then laying along the opposite arm with his head heavy on Aziraphale’s hand.

 

    This time, they argue the poems-- which also helps to fill the time. There’s not really much they disagree on, really-- a few in, and Aziraphale realizes Crawly’s only asked him what they really mean and if they’re any good in order to take a contrary position.

 

    “Naughty little beast, why I even bother…” He tuts, and Crawly grins.

 

    “We have fun.”

 

    “Fun, he says. I shouldn’t wonder! Fun, to a demon, well I certainly don’t share your idea of fun, you little terror.”

 

    Crawly chuckles, pushing his nose under where Aziraphale’s fingers curl, tips resting against the table. “I’m sure I’m sorry, then, I thought we were having fun.”

 

    “You are not sorry, you-- What _are_ you doing?”

 

    “I’m freezing, that’s what I’m doing.”

 

    “Well, that’s no way to-- Come on, you foolish creature.” Aziraphale opens the front of his robes again. “In here. Just for a minute, mind. Not spending the rest of the month carrying you about like a baby.”

 

    Crawly slithers into the space made for him eagerly, soaking up the warmth, until he catches onto the words.

 

    “A month?”

 

    “Well… I think. Hard to keep proper track, but I think a month until the rains stop. Of course then we’ll be waiting on the waters to recede.”

 

    Crawly groans. It’s better than Hell, he tells himself, but he’s not sure he believes it.

 

    For an hour, Aziraphale reads to him while he huddles against him. When they run out of the latest armload of tablets, he rises up a little, swaying out far enough to meet Aziraphale’s eyes.

 

    “Hold still, demon.” Aziraphale chides, grabbing at his lashing tail through the fabric of his robes. “... What?”

 

    “What do you think I’m like, Aziraphale?” He asks, in a voice that is barely a voice.

 

    “I think you’re a nuisance, of course.” Aziraphale answers, but not as quickly as he might. His expression is uncertain.

 

    “What am I _like_?” Crawly insists, and his tail slides up to curve around the back of Aziraphale’s neck, as he holds his gaze. “I mean _really_ look.”

 

    Aziraphale shakes his head. “You’re cut off from the Host.”

 

    “Please.”

 

    “ _No_.” He whispers. “You can’t-- That is, I can’t--”

 

    “ _Please_.”

 

    “Touching my wing hurt you, before. This will be worse…”

 

    “I want to know what I am.”

 

    “You’re a demon.” Aziraphale cups his face, gentle. “You can’t be what you were.”

 

    “I don’t want to be. I just want to know… I want to know what’s left of me.”

 

    “You don’t wan-- If you had the choice, you wouldn’t be what you were?”

 

    “No. I couldn’t be. Too full of sin to go back to the angels, angel. But I have to know… I have to know what’s there.”

 

    _Sin_. He’d thought himself irredeemable, in Heaven. He had thought himself base and lustful. He had looked upon Aziraphale and wanted, hadn’t he? It’s a thousand red-hot needles to think much on it, to try to remember what they’d been like, but he had named the feeling and let it damn him, and thought he knew so much of Evil.

 

    He’d bitten into the Fruit and it was mealy and tasteless in his mouth, and a cold voice in the base of his skull had laughed at him. _You little fool_ , it had said. _You think you know of Lust_? And for the first time in all of existence he’d felt it, an unpleasant rush of heat to unfamiliar loins, a useless and itchy feeling, nothing like the desire that had gripped him Before.

 

    It’s easier to think he’d always been wicked, than to think of that little voice whispering to him, _You could have stayed_.

 

    He opens himself. He still can do that. He opens himself and he tastes the essence of Aziraphale, and smells those ancient-undreamt of things-- leather, he knows leather now, but not the other-- and he feels the warmth and the Mercy, but it’s the fire that he feels most. It slices through him sure as the sword he’d given up might have, he can hear himself cry out as he writhes in agony, but he holds fast to the connection.

 

    “Oh!” Aziraphale cries out as well, in sympathy rather than pain.

 

    “Don’t-- don’t go!”

 

    “You _can’t_ …”

 

    “But do you-- do you sssee me?”

 

    The desperation is a clawing thing, and with the connection open between them, Aziraphale feels it in the core of his being, as if the feeling was his own. He ought to have said no, he ought to have said no straight off, but…

 

    But the words he’d used, when he had asked… it took him back to another time, and…

 

    A coincidence. It can only be a coincidence. Crawly’s essence is choked in hellfire. To dive into him is to swim through thick, black smoke. It obscures all else-- scent, taste, sight. He feels as if he’s falling fast through it, but it isn’t painful to him the way he must be painful to Crawly, Crawly who writhes and shudders and heaves in his arms, in the sling his robes make.

 

    “Please don’t-- don’t go until you’ve seen me!” He begs, wracked with, wrecked with pain, but there’s no way. There’s the feeling of something sitting thick on his tongue that only tastes of ashes, there’s only smoke, there’s only sulfur. The more he looks, the further he twists the knife, and then he realizes, with a sudden sick feeling, that whatever essence beats within that veil of smoke, it’s growing rapidly weaker.

 

    Aziraphale slams the connection shut with a gasp. Crawly goes limp in his arms.

 

    “No-- no no no, oh, no… Oh, you foolish creature! Oh, you damnable thing!” He sniffs. “You stupid, _stupid_ beast!”

 

    The shock of separation is nearly as agonizing as the holiness boring into him, but Crawly hasn’t even got the strength to hold on, to press closer. He is only dimly aware of Aziraphale’s voice, of Aziraphale rising from his chair.

 

    He is laid on a soft bed. A warm blanket is pulled over him. Blackness takes him.

 

    When he wakes, Aziraphale is holding a shallow bowl of wine near his snout. His tongue flickers out to get the measure of it. _Warm_ wine. Spiced, heated… It’s not as if it really does anything for him physically, drinking, but he lifts his head a little and laps at it. The warmth is nice, anyway.

 

    “I could have _killed_ you. I hope you’re happy!”

 

    “You said…” Crawly chuckles weakly. “You said you wouldn’t waste your abilities on getting me a bed.”

 

    “You wicked, ungrateful devil!”

 

    “Aziraphale… Aziraphale, I didn’t mean it.” He pushes his nose against the hand holding the bowl. “Did you…?”

 

    “No. I’m sorry, my dear.”

 

    “Well. You tried.”

 

    “Drink. You need your strength.”

 

    He isn’t terribly inclined to point out that wine is unlikely to contribute to his strength. Neither does it detract from it, at any rate. And Aziraphale must have miracled this up, as well. Holding his head up feels like too much effort-- he slithers around a bit so that he can rest his chin on Aziraphale’s hand and dip his tongue down into the wine.

 

    “Mercy from an angel…”

 

    “Angels _are_ merciful.”

 

    “Are they?”

 

    Aziraphale looks guiltily towards a window. “Well… within reason.”

 

    “Not like you.”

 

    “Hush up and drink your wine.”

 

    Crawly does.

 

    He sleeps. Aziraphale reads to him in bed now, instead of at the table. He feeds him, too, after a few bouts of rest and a couple helpings of wine. Figs, Crowley thinks, are much improved by being mashed into paste and spread over bite-sized pieces of soft, flat bread. At least, when you aren’t built to chew, it’s much easier to taste them that way. With grapes, he’d been lucky enough to find a bruised one, or he’d have never known there was more to taste than the skin of it… He’d learned, back when he’d had little hands at his disposal, that he could crush or tear at fruit to get more taste from it, but now he can really only swallow things whole. Aziraphale places each bite very daintily into his waiting jaws, the bread carrying lentils or fruit paste, or merely dragged through olive oil.

 

    “Too much.” He shakes his head at last. “Don’t need food…”

 

    “Are you certain?”

 

    “Don’t think it helps.” He admits. “But I like it. Little tastes. It’s just… too much. Feels too heavy.”

 

    “All right.” Aziraphale strokes his head gently.

 

    “Have you tried it?”

 

    “No. I don’t-- I don’t eat.”

 

    “You ought to know what it’s like, at least.”

 

    “Excuse me, dear, but the last time someone took a menu recommendation from _you_ \--”

 

    “Yeah, yeah, what harm is it going to do if you try? You miracled it up, so you know it can’t be bad.”

 

    “Well…” Aziraphale frowns. He can’t fault that logic… and it would be good to know, wouldn’t it? He can’t very well feed someone something if he doesn’t know if it’s good or bad. Suppose he had to provide sustenance to the starving faithful one of these days? Wouldn’t it behoove him to know if he were providing something which brought comfort and pleasure, rather than something merely tolerable?

 

    He winds up finishing the rest of the plate-- it is all comforting and pleasurable, he decides, which is as it ought to be. And it’s not as if there was any reason to keep this particular helping around, if Crawly had eaten his fill.

 

    He can’t simply heal him, because it would hurt him further, but he’s learning what sort of contact they can and can’t have, at least. And perhaps it’s not so terrible a thing, if he sleeps through most of the flood here in safety.

 

    “Crawly?” He prods at him. The rains have stopped. The water outside is still, aside from a gentle current. When Crawly sleeps, Aziraphale sometimes opens the shutters and watches the fish go by, though he keeps the sight of it all blocked out as best he can when Crawly wakes, knowing it frightens him.

 

    “Nn.”

 

    “Would you like--” He begins, and then he feels the _hum_ that fills the room. He throws the blanket the rest of the way over him, rumpling it quickly. There. That doesn’t look like it’s concealing a demon. He hopes.

 

    It’s all very well for their Creator to turn a blind eye, but he doesn’t think the other angels would do.

 

    “Aziraphale.” The Metatron greets, column of light exploding into being in the center of the room. “You’re to go-- What is that?”

 

    “What is what?”

 

    “What is that behind you?”

 

    “Oh. That. That’s a bed. It-- it’s part of the house. I don’t sleep in it.”

 

    “What is _in_ the bed?” The Metatron presses.

 

    “Ah. Well… You see, as I was preparing to hole up for the flood, there was-- I saw a creature--”

 

    “What manner of creature is it?”

 

    “Erm…”

 

    “Right.” The Metatron sighs. “So you’ve thrown off the ineffable plan, and the whole count of all creatures to be brought into this new world, because you felt sorry for a creature. An unclean creature, I take it.”

 

    “Well it matters very little to me whether it’s clean or unclean, so I thought it’s just as well. I mean… it was just going to be so _lonely_ …”

 

    “Well, I wasn’t told anything about chucking the thing out the window, so I suppose that’s fine, but you really do need to curb these impulses of yours. You’re to go up and get a look at things up top. Check on the state of it. Minor miracles left to your discretion.”

 

    “Yes, Sir.”

 

    “Aziraphale?”

 

    “Yes, Sir?”

 

    “ _Minor_ miracles.”

 

    “Yes, Sir.”

 

    And with that, he’s gone. Aziraphale sags with relief, returning to the bed to find Crawly awake beneath the blanket, flattened down as best he can be to the bed and shaking like a leaf.

 

    “It’s all right, he’s gone now.”

 

    “Don’t go.”

 

    “What do you mean don’t go? Up top? I’ve got to.”

 

    “Aziraphale, please--”

 

    “It’s my _duty_.”

 

    “What if it all collapses without you here?” He winds himself around Aziraphale’s wrist, in a fruitless attempt at tugging him down to the bed.

 

    “Don’t be silly, of course it won’t.”

 

    “I won’t be strong enough to hold it if it starts to go.”

 

    Aziraphale worries at his lip, and then nods and opens the front of his robes again. “Come on, then. Not that there’s anything to worry about, we’ll come home and find it as dry as we left it! But you may as well. We won’t be wet.”

 

    “We won’t be? Aziraphale, if-- if that water is _ethereal_ in nature…”

 

    “We won’t be.”

 

    Crawly nods, and lets Aziraphale bundle him into his robes again, holding on as best he can while avoiding where he knows his wings will come out. He closes his eyes tight, as Aziraphale opens the door. There had been water nearly up against it, before, but it moves obligingly out of Aziraphale’s way, opens up all the way to the surface, wide enough that Aziraphale’s wings don’t skim against it when he takes them both up.

 

    “Shh… shh…” He soothes, cradling the demon against his breast. After some searching around, during which Crawly continues to keep his eyes closed, he finds the only perch there is, and it’s less that he comes to rest in the tree, more that he allows the powers inherent in his being keep him there. “All right, you can look.”

 

    Crawly does. He wishes he hadn’t. The water is _everywhere_.

 

    “Are we in for a long wait?”

 

    “We may be, yes.”

 

    “D’you want to play a game?” He asks miserably.

 

    “Oh, I spy with my little eye, something beginning with W? That’ll get old fast.” Aziraphale sighs.

 

    “Just a thought.” He rests his chin on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “If you’ve got a better one, angel, you just let me know. At least I can feel the sun...”

 

    He winds up sleeping, in the end. Huddled against Aziraphale, giving the occasional twitch or shiver in his sleep. Aziraphale wonders if demons ever dream, but he doesn’t see why Crawly should give him an honest answer about it. He’d said you stopped thinking and feeling, when you slept. But humans dream… and animals. Why not angels, or ex-angels?

 

    “Crawly.” He says, when three days have passed. “Crawly!”

 

    “What?”

 

    “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with D.”

 

    “Given that I’m the only thing to look at that isn’t more water--”

 

    “Not _you_. Look!”

 

    Crawly does. It’s rather far off to make out, but again, given it’s the only thing there is…

 

    “B, don’t you mean?”

 

    “D.”

 

    “If you like.” He shrugs. “Looks like a bird to me.”

 

    Still, he’s never been gladder to see a bird in all his days. Even in the garden, when they’d been his sole company so often, there hadn’t been such a desperate relief. It’s the same sort of bird, anyway, the softish, roundish white sort.

 

    It perches on Aziraphale’s other shoulder and rests, exhausted. Crawly watches as Aziraphale produces a palmful of seeds from nowhere to feed it. He darts forward to flick his tongue out over them, grinning over the gentle rebuke it gets him.

 

    “Only teasssing.” He settles back down and lets the bird eat in peace. “I didn’t bother him. These sorts are too stupid to be afraid of demons, I imagine.”

 

    “Oh, behave yourself.”

 

    “I am. If I was being awful, I’d have swallowed the bird.” He says. He wouldn’t, and what’s worse, he thinks Aziraphale knows it.

 

    The bird eats. It rests. Eventually, it takes a bit of twig from Aziraphale’s hand.

 

    “Off you go.” He says, and off it does.

 

    “Off where?” Crawly asks, but Aziraphale is silent, watching the bird fly away.

 

    Crawly goes back to sleep.

 

    This time, when he wakes, a lot more seems to have happened. Aziraphale must be keeping them cloaked from view.

 

    “What’s all this?” He demands, but Aziraphale doesn’t say. A bloody big boat, is what it is, teeming with animals. But when he turns to repeat the question, there’s a swath of color over Aziraphale’s head, which proves rather distracting. “What’s _that_?”

 

    “Hm?” Aziraphale looks up. “Oh. That must be the covenant.”

 

    “Doesn’t look like a covenant to me.” Crawly says, though he can’t think what he imagines a covenant does look like. Some other kind of stupid bird, or a weird ritual, or… well, not this. “I like it.”

 

    “You’re not meant to like it. You’re a demon.”

 

    “I like it.” He insists. And after a moment’s concentration, he ripples with color himself, it shimmers on his no-longer-matte scales. Time for a change, anyway.

 

    “Blasphemous.” Aziraphale huffs, but his fingertips play over Crawly’s upper back. “Well. That’s that for now… Home again, home again-- Unless you’d rather I drop you here? You’d missed the sun, I do recall...”

 

    There’s very little ground, and a _lot_ of hooved animals.

 

    “Back to yours is fine.” He says.

 

    “All right. Just until the waters recede. We’ve a couple more poems to discuss, as long as you’re coming back.”

 

    “Marvelous.”


	4. And Like a Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes they're in and out of each other's orbits like a whisper. Sometimes they make an impression.

    The last time he’d seen Aziraphale was at the tower.

 

    Crawly had received a commendation, as this time there were no other demons running about taking credit for everything. For all he knows, actually hard at work, but he’s discovered sloth is quite his favorite sin, and mankind’s capacity for hubris and cruelty are such that he can indulge in it quite a bit and not worry about not making his quota.

 

    The tower… now that punishment he’d thought had been a clever joke, beyond what he’d given Heaven credit for, and he was all set to be amused by the fallout no matter who was behind it-- and to rake in the reward for having set mankind up for a fall-- until he realized he was the one who’d have to bloody well learn all these new languages.

 

    He has a talent for it, he discovers, but even so it is work.

 

    Here, in this stretch of cities along the river, they speak just the one. Outsiders are few, and those who don’t speak the right tongue…

 

    Well. He’s gotten a commendation for that, too.

 

    He been to each of the five cities in the area, and that’s good enough he can take credit. He expects upstairs is sorry to have promised not to send another flood, but he’s glad for it himself, he doesn’t want to wind up caught in one just because he picked the wrong place to take a nap. They’re all fairly abysmal, the cities of the plain, from Admah to Zeboim, but it’s like they say, work smarter, not harder.

 

    Or work not at all, and let Hell think what it pleases about your ethic for it.

 

    He’s lazing about enjoying a fine night-- fine, in that only one angry mob had gone past him, and they kept on going-- when he sees Aziraphale again. He shimmers out of thin air and drops onto a bench beneath the trees, and he’s _weeping_ , and…

 

    And Crawly _owes_ him, doesn’t he? For the flood.

 

    “Angel…” He hangs down over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Why are you crying?”

 

    He glares at Crawly, hard enough to make him shrink back.

 

    “Eight men.” He shakes his head. “ _Eight_.”

 

    “The mob I saw was twenty, more like. Glad I’ve not been able to take any other shape but this one, I don’t mind telling you.” He shudders. “They don’t trust strangers.”

 

    “I _know_. That mob you saw wanted to torture me.”

 

    “You? Well-- So? They can’t, can they?”

 

    “They were going to cut Uriel’s legs off at the knee, said he was too tall.”

 

    “He probably is too tall. Does he know men don’t grow to eight foot?”

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t laugh. He wipes at his eyes angrily. “I should have known you’d be here. I should have known someone was to blame for this wicked place!”

 

    “If Hell asks, yeah. I’ve been doing brisk business according to the last report I sent in and I don’t want anyone saying I haven’t been.” He looks around. “They weren’t very impressed with my latest venture. I _need_ this.”

 

    “You disgust me, you really do.” His voice wavers rather distressingly.

 

    “What? Just for taking credit for something I didn’t do? Come _on_. You’ve never accepted congratulations on a job well done when it was just people being people?”

 

    “No, I never have!” He snaps, and then stops. “You… this isn’t-- it hasn’t been-- your doing?”

 

    “Like this when I got here.” He shrugs.

 

    “Crawly…”

 

    “Forget it.”

 

    He wipes at his face again, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. More tears just spill out. Crawly sways closer, tongue flicking out against Aziraphale’s cheek. It burns, but only a little. It tastes like salt, and those mysterious things that only seem to exist in the essence of him.

 

    “Wicked serpent, you stop that.” Aziraphale pushes his face away. “Suppose that had hurt you, foolish thing.”

 

    “Tears are tears. It’s not holy water.”

 

    “It’s practically water and it’s certainly divine. Ethereal.”

 

    “Yes, but not _blesssssed_.”

 

    “Well, either way, it tickles and you mayn’t.”

 

    “Ticklesss, does it?” He dodges Aziraphale’s hand and tries to come around for the other side, but he’s held at bay.

 

    “You mayn’t!” Aziraphale repeats, and Crawly draws back, head dangling in acknowledgment of the reprimand. Aziraphale clears his throat. “Thank you.”

 

    “You’re not crying because the humans want to torture you, really, are you?”

 

    “Of course not. Well, I am, because it’s unforgivably wicked of them, and it’s-- I’m not afraid of being hurt, that’s not the _point._ The point is, there’s fifteen good men in Bela, three in Admah, two in Zeboim, _one_ in Gomorrah, and eight here.” He shakes his head. “That’s, that’s-- Fifteen, three, two-- fifteen, five, one, eight--”

 

    “Twenty-nine, all told?”

 

    “Twenty-nine all told.” He nods. “Thank you, dear, you were quick with that.”

 

    “Well.” Crawly grins broadly. “I’m an adder.”

 

    This time, Aziraphale laughs. “You’re a python.”

 

    “Am I really?”

 

    “Well, no, not really. But near as it gets. Anyhow.” He sighs. “I can’t just move five men from Bela to… anywhere. Twenty-nine, that’s not even thirty, and even if it were, the way they’re scattered, it wouldn’t be enough, it’s just-- _Eight_! To come so close to ten and fall short, and I-- and so they’re all going to perish, or, most of them. Fifteen, sixteen… That’s thirteen, thirteen good men who are just going to _die_ , because-- because all this wickedness, I--”

 

    “Weren’t there good men who died in the flood?”

 

    “Oh, I-- Well, I thought-- I mean, I was told the Ark-- I was told it was only-- No. Of course they didn’t. The world was a much wickeder place! The world was a much wickeder place then.”

 

    “I suppose so. But if you’re worried because you’ve met the wicked, it’s all right, angel. They only threatened you because you’re an outsider, they-- they mostly don’t go ‘round, you know, to each other.”

 

    “The cities are going to be destroyed. All except Bela, but… There’s nothing to be done for the other three cities. We have our headcounts. And the others are sending one man away from this place, but… that leaves seven men here, six across the other cities.”

 

    “Why don’t you send the others away?”

 

    “Send the others away?” Aziraphale blinks.

 

    “Yeah. The other righteous men. Give them a fair warning. Suppose you might not have time to warn them in every city, but you could get some here. I could help.”

 

    “You could-- you could help?”

 

    “Well…” Crawly looks away. “I owe you for the flood, don’t I? A demon knows a righteous heart from a wicked one as well as an angel does. I know where they live. Mind, no promising they’ll listen to a great talking python-- it is a python?”

 

    “It is a python.” His smile is cautious. “You would do that for me?”

 

    “Makes us even, if I do something for you. I’ll take the south end of town, two of them share lodgings, so I can get to three in the time you’ll get the four on the north.”

 

    “I wasn’t ordered to…”

 

    “Do you only save the lives you were ordered to save?”

 

    “ _Yes_! That’s part of being an angel!”

 

    “You really are thick. Unless you were ordered to save mine.”

 

    “Oh. Well, that’s different, isn’t it? I mean, you’re…”

 

    “Yes?”

 

    “... I don’t ask how to proceed with you. You’re a… We have an… understanding?”

 

    It’s not the same as being friends, but he’ll take it. “Well now understand this. You go north and I’ll go south, and we’ll see what we can do for the righteous.”

 

    “Crawly…” Aziraphale touches him gently. “Just be out of the city by dawn. As we speak, that mob you saw-- Be gone by sunrise, and head for Bela or don’t head for anything at all. And-- just to be safe-- whatever happens, don’t turn back.”

 

    He nods, and disappears, and Aziraphale does the same.

 

    He doesn’t know how Crawly fares. He knows he doesn’t do very well himself, there’s no time. Uriel and the angel he’s kept with him have already blinded the crowd, are helping the family to hastily pack, are preparing to call in the cavalry to rain down fire and brimstone… The four men he flies to don’t take the message well. One gibbers in fear and all but tears his bed apart seeking to hide, another is too old and frail to travel, another sets about packing so extensively that Aziraphale fears he won’t be done in time no matter how he exhorts him to hurry and leave what he can, and the fourth calls him a false vision in a nightmare and refuses to listen to him, and taking on his truest form does nothing to sway him once he believes he’s in a dream.

 

    The five in Admah and Zeboim he can do nothing for. If he flies fast, the single man in the closest city can be warned. He winds up leaving with nothing, he and his wife stark naked as they flee, but Aziraphale follows them out and makes sure they’re unaccosted, before the fire begins.

 

    Crawly… is he safe? What would happen to him if he couldn’t--

 

    No. He would be fine. It’s brimstone, it’s fire, he’s a _demon_ , he’d be…

 

    Safe!

 

    He swoops down, navigating thick columns of smoke from the burning city, landing on the road to Bela. Ahead, two men lean on each other, hurrying to catch up to the family farthest along, no looking back, one monument to why.

 

    “Would you like a lift?” He asks, more relieved than he can say that it really is him, and not a fallen branch. Or a real python, though he wouldn’t have expected one of those in these parts.

 

    “Please. Far, far away, if it suits you.” Crawly nods.

 

    He slips into Aziraphale’s robes, and wraps himself once around the back of his neck, careful. He keeps his eyes closed, just in case-- or perhaps because it’s disconcerting to trust another’s flying-- and Aziraphale takes off.

 

    He stops at last, some miles upwind and to the other side of the Jordan, and tucks his wings away that he might fall back onto the grass, Crawly a comfortable weight over his torso.

 

    “ _Whoo-ee_! The stink of it, I’ll be smelling that for days!” Crawly exclaims, and seems quite content just to remain curled up on top of him.

 

    “Aren’t you used to brimstone?”

 

    “Oh, no. They don’t ask me down much, and I try not to _get_ asked.” He shakes his head, and then rests his chin flat on Aziraphale’s chest.

 

    “Oh, shove off-- you’re heavier than you look, you know.” Aziraphale says, though he’s not at all too heavy for him to bear-- still, he can’t go about lounging under demons... “Let me up.”

 

    Crawly slithers out of his robes, and when Aziraphale gets to his feet, Crawly periscopes up to face him, as best he can.

 

    “Doesn’t it bother you?” He asks.

 

    “Not really… I-- _Crawly_ …”

 

    Aziraphale pauses. He thinks of the two men on the road, who would have died without the demon’s help-- and the married couple he’d saved in another town, who he never would have thought to fly to save, if it wasn’t for him… A favor for a favor, and still…

 

    “Crawly, did you say before-- you can’t take any other shape but this?”

 

    “Oh, I can, but it’s pretty blessed grim.” He snorts. “Can’t do the limbs. Arms, legs… can’t take my wings out, either. Not since the garden, since-- You know. Cursed to crawl on my belly and all. You don’t want to see me try for any shape but this one.”

 

    “Oh…”

 

    Aziraphale touches Crawly’s cheek, before he can sink back down to the ground, and instead he straightens up a bit, though Aziraphale still has to bend, to kiss the top of his head.

 

    “Thank you, my dear demon.” He whispers, straightening.

 

    It ought to burn, Crawly thinks. It ought to ache him. It ought to be bitter to him. With all he’s felt and suffered, with what they are, it ought to be a hateful thing.

 

    He feels _light_. He feels _good_. It feels like lying in bed lapping at warm spiced wine.

 

    “That’sss usss even, then.” He nods. “I’ll see you around, angel.”

 

    “Er, yes. And-- keep trying, with the-- I’m sure eventually, you-- Well. Just-- I’m sure you’ll get it down. Changing shape. Your wings are still _in_ you.”

 

    “Sure. Next time you won’t hardly know me.”

 

    “I’ll know you, you old serpent.” Aziraphale shakes his head, and Crawly doesn’t know what to do with the feelings that bubble up in him at the thought.

 

    He goes south for a while, until he finds a little roadside temple, erected to some snake god he’d never heard of before. It seems like a safe place to take shelter for a while, and to observe life from. Some part of him must be angel still-- he’s not comfortable with being worshiped, it makes his insides squirm and go cold. Lucifer would love this racket, he thinks, but after tasting a few offerings and enjoying the safety of it, and issuing a few inconsequential orders for his own amusement, he’s too uncomfortable not to move on. He travels, and he tastes, and he tries, and when he finally finds his wings, he takes himself back the way he came, to see what change the years may have wrought.

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t travel too far. He watches a new alphabet emerge in Canaan, and watches the laws of Babylon be codified, and he thinks of Intercession.

 

    He pushes the thought away each time, ever more violently from his mind. Damn them both, why doesn’t he, doubly-damn the poor thing?

 

    It weighs heavy on his mind when he can’t keep himself occupied. He works very hard. There are people who need him, in what small ways he can intercede for _them_ , for what minor miracles he may grant.

 

    He lies down sometimes, to try and feel what it is people feel, when they lie awake at night troubled by too much. He’s not sure if it’s the same.

 

    He doesn’t only think of the demon, of course. He thinks of a thousand souls he can do little for. He thinks of families who struggle to eat, he thinks of men who come home from their work with terrible illnesses as the result of their labors, he thinks of those who suffer in bondage, he thinks of the elderly and infirm, he thinks of those born too young and too frail. He thinks of beasts of burden beaten too freely. He thinks of the lame or the young animal snapped up by the crocodile-- he thinks too of the plights of the crocodile, which may be revered by some, but not well-loved. He thinks of men with wealth and power who cannot see the coming of their own downfall, and he thinks of small birds which think little of anything at all.

 

    He thinks about the weight of the whole world heavy upon him.

 

    The demon is in the world, that is all.

 

    When he sees him again, he knows him. He looks wan, as if recovering from a long illness, with glossy hair, dark as night when he stands in shadow and shining like a flame in a copper brazier when he steps out into the sun. He turns his face to the light with a serpent’s contented smile. And, most tellingly, when he lifts his bare foot, the sole of it is scaled.

 

    “Angel.” He greets, without opening his eyes, as Aziraphale draws near.

 

    “Demon.” Aziraphale smiles, and to his horror the fondness that fills his heart, the wonder… The question of what excitement is about to take him now that the demon is here.

 

    “It’s been a long time, Aziraphale…”

 

    “We’ve known each other a long time, Crawly.”

 

    “Three thousand years, give or take.”

 

    “Just over two and a half, there haven’t been three yet. I suppose serpents don’t keep calendars.”

 

    “I suppose they don’t.” He looks at him sidelong. His eyes open. Those are unchanged… He finds he is absurdly glad that they should be familiar to him. He’d found them so dear, like a cat’s. Not at all cold or wicked, except for playfully so… “You knew me.”

 

    “And you…”

 

    “Mm, you don’t walk anyplace but you bleed out mercy. Change your form a thousand times and you would be the same. I know what you taste of. Change your form a thousand times, I’ll know you.”

 

    “Believe me, I’ve put in a request to. For a proper change in vessel. I’ve tried putting a beard in--”

 

    “It doesn’t suit you.” Crawly tuts.

 

    “No, but the face is so _young_ , and I feel so _old_.”

 

    “Older than dirt. Happens to the best of us.”

 

    “You don’t seem to mind. Don’t you worry people won’t take you seriously.”

 

    “I don’t need to be taken seriously.” He grins, and his teeth are sharp. “I’m beautiful. People will wish to please me.”

 

    “You look a bit peaky, actually.”

 

    “Well… it was a great effort regaining my limbs. I might well look a bit peaky after all that. It did take me ages.”

 

    “You’ve not got toes.”

 

    “Forgot how they work.” He scowls.

 

    “Dear, but you are a ridiculous creature… Come here, then.” Aziraphale gestures for him to follow, around the corner of a building, to where there’s a low stone bench. He pulls one sandalled foot up on the bench between them, holding still, so still he doesn’t even breathe, as Crawly runs curiously chill fingertips along the top of his foot, studying the tendons, the way it all fits.

 

    “Flex.” He commands, and Aziraphale does. Crawly nods, satisfied, and then he pulls his own feet up, showing them off, utterly perfect in form-- if still scaled along the bottom.

 

    “Suppose it saves you buying shoes.” Aziraphale comments.

 

    “Suppose it does.” Crawly smiles, following his meaning.

 

    He supposes, also, that his name suits him less than ever, though in the absence of anything else, it shall have to suffice.

 

    “And what have you gotten up to, these past years?”

 

    “Accidentally had a bit of a cult dedicated to me. Which I suppose is all well and good demonic activity.” He answers, and hopes his unease doesn’t come through in his speech. “It was all very fine. People brought me fine incense, and bowls of wines and milks.”

 

    “Snakes don’t drink milk.” Aziraphale blinks.

 

    “Oh. Well, I liked it fine. Milk from goats and sheep and cows and everything. Very high-class. And if you told ‘em dance, they’d do it, too. How about you?”

 

    “Not very much. Just quiet good works.” He says, with a hint of a smirk.

 

    “Oh, sure. Sounds very dull. You must have missed me terribly, if that’s all you’ve had to do. No one to even argue with.”

 

    “Oh, yes, I’ve hated being able to read in peace.” Aziraphale rolls his eyes. He doesn’t further argue the point.


	5. You Can Feel the Punishment But You Can't Commit the Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another interlude, another break.

    “I don’t like this.” Crawly frowns.

 

    They’d mostly avoided each other, for a good bit, though they’d both been in the same city. It seemed easier, when being in each other’s company led to nobody getting any work done, as they sat about undoing each other’s efforts and elbowing each other sharply.

 

    Now, though, they gravitate to the same rooftop, and Crawly isn’t sure who drew whom to the spot. Random chance? Stranger things…

 

    “No, nor do I, if I’m honest.” Aziraphale says, and he shivers once.

 

    “He’s technically one of yours, isn’t he? If he sees us together…?”

 

    “Azrael doesn’t care.” He frowns, as the angel in question passes by, hand dragging along the wall, and then lifting. Drag, drag, lift. Drag, lift. “He’s rather preoccupied with his own Duties.”

 

    “It’s funny. I know we’ve been in the same place at the same time before. I mean… can’t be helped. But _seeing_ him’s different.”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “I don’t like it.”

 

    “You’re not meant to like it, are you? It’s Divine Will, it’s part of the--”

 

    “Part of the plan, yes, yes, and I’m a demon, I know. But you’ve got to admit…”

 

    “I haven’t got to admit a thing.” Aziraphale insists.

 

    “But you don’t like it, either.”

 

    “Well, I-- I don’t like seeing it happen, of course.” He says.

 

    Somewhere up the street, a baby wakes. Cries.

 

    Lift, lift, lift, drag.

 

    The night is quiet.

 

    “But you don’t _like_ this.” Crawly presses, desperate.

 

    “I’ve said I don’t, haven’t I?” He snaps, with a rising desperation of his own. “It isn’t my jurisdiction, I’m no more responsible for everything on earth than you are! I’m-- I-- But this _is_ , and it’s not my place to _argue_.”

 

    “What if it was your jurisdiction?”

 

    “Then I’d do it.” Aziraphale says mildly. Prim. He folds his hands and stares out at the moon.

 

    “You wouldn’t.” Crawly shakes his head.

 

    “I would. I do my duty.”

 

    “Oh, do you?” He sneers.

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “And was it your duty when--”

 

    “Because if I don’t I’ll be punished.” The words spill out of him, high and breathless. For a moment the world is still.

 

    “You don’t know what punishment is.” Crawly shakes his head, slinking off.

 

    Behind him, Aziraphale drops to his knees.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “Curious amount of traffic.” Aziraphale says cautiously. “As we were leaving, I mean.”

 

    They haven’t really spoken for a couple of nights, and this time it wasn’t upon mutual agreement so much as an icy avoidance… Crawly hasn’t wanted to speak to him since the last plague, and he’d felt rather tetchy himself, if he’s honest, but…

 

    He wants things to just be normal, he supposes. Yes, they’re… enemies. Maybe they ought to argue. But… He’s familiar. Even when the face isn’t, he is. The same eyes, the same voice, the same…

 

    The same _person_ , in and out of what is an otherwise lonely existence.

 

    They ought to be able to speak civilly.

 

    Crawly’s smile is cautious. He’s been looking down, avoiding meeting the eyes of other travelers walking along the road with them, but he looks up, to attempt a grin for Aziraphale.

 

    “Yeah, traffic.”

 

    “A lot of merchants coming in, I wonder what that’s all about. I suppose I’ve been so preoccupied with things going to plan I haven’t paid much attention to the ordinary business of things. Markets and merchants.”

 

    “A lot of open carts? Fruit?”

 

    “I think so. I didn’t look that closely.”

 

    “Nice.”

 

    “If you like. You could go back and look around, you know.”

 

    “I thought I’d stick around. Until we reach the next place.”

 

    “Er.”

 

    “What?”

 

    “Ah.”

 

    “Angel, there’s a next place.” Crawly presses, no longer certain.

 

    “Oh, yes, eventually.” He nods. “Of course there is. We’ll be back in Canaan eventually, I think. I expect it’s going to look very different. But, erm… well, it’ll take a while.”

 

    “How far are we from there?”

 

    “Forty years.” Aziraphale says, as quickly and quietly as he can.

 

    “ _What_.”

 

    “Nothing!” He pastes on a bright and unconvincing grin. “Did you want to turn back and go and have a look at the merchants?”

 

    “Oh, desperately, but did you say we’re forty _years_ from our destination? Last I checked, years were not a measure of distance.”

 

    “Forty days, I said. You remember the last time we spent forty days together, you hated it.”

 

    “Learn to lie!” Crawly says, with some disgust. “What do you know about the next forty years?”

 

    “Nothing!”

 

    “I should have stayed behind!” He grouses. “If I turned around now, it’d be too late to see all the fruit carts get smashed in the chase.”

 

    “What?”

 

    “What?”

 

    “Too late to see all the fruit carts get smashed in what chase?”

 

    “Er.”

 

    “ _What_ chase?”

 

    “Ah.”

 

    “What have you _done_?”

 

    “Well, I didn’t think this through-- and you’ll find this funny, I think, really. With a little distance you really will!”

 

    “Are they chasing _us_?”

 

    “That part’s not my doing!”

 

    “ _You_ \-- you little snake! You were put out with me over our argument about the plagues and you did this! Why should I believe you didn’t?”

 

    “ _Because_.” Crawly gives him a hard look. The rest of the caravan passes around them, doesn’t look at them or hear them argue. “After Azrael, I don’t want to see what comes _next_.”

 

    “Crawly, I--”

 

    “Forget it.” He walks on, leaving Aziraphale behind a long moment, before he remembers how to move. He dashes forward, within the little bubble that seems to separate them from the humans. He catches Crawly’s wrist, only to be shaken off. “Leave it, angel.”

 

    “Crawly, I’m sorry.”

 

    “No, you’re not.” He wheels around. “You’re not _sorry_. I’m just a demon, aren’t I? I mean, bloody-- well, bloody someplace, you think everything’s my fault, don’t you?”

 

    “No--”

 

    “You blame me for everything! Three thousand years--”

 

    “Two thousand six hundred and--”

 

    “Three thousand years! And how often has it been my fault, when you’ve blamed me for something?”

 

    “Once or twice… The Fall--”

 

    “If that’s how far you’ve got to go back…” He shakes his head.

 

    “It’s your job… I do my job.”

 

    “Yeah, well, I do my job, but I don’t-- But I’m not responsible for everything! I don’t mind if you want to complain about the things I do, all right? I get it, it’s your job! But I didn’t do Sodom. I didn’t do this. And my side’s not the ones who-- All that, with-- I mean, I never-- You know, what I do, it’s not like _that_ , it’s not cruel.”

 

    “Of course I am sorry.” Aziraphale folds his arms. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t! I don’t think you’re-- You’re not just--”

 

    “Forget it.”

 

    “No, I--”

 

    “Forget it. You don’t have to apologize. We’re enemies. Doesn’t do anyone any favors to forget it. You did me a good turn and I did you one and now it’s back to business.”

 

    “Crawly…” He takes a hesitant half step nearer. “I am sorry. I--”

 

    But there’s nothing he can say, is there? He can’t say he doesn’t see him as an enemy, he doesn’t dare say it. He certainly can’t say Crawly is right about the business with the plagues. He doesn’t believe that, he doesn’t think. He spent an unbearable morning telling himself over and over he that he didn’t believe Crawly was right about that. He didn’t, he doesn’t, he _can’t_.

 

    “You’re right.” He nods at last, his voice soft. “Back to business.”

 

    “Should’ve stayed to watch all the carts getting turned over.” Crawly mutters to himself. The strange bubble around them bursts, they’re no longer safe in a world of their own, untouched by those around them.

 

    “Yes, well, with any luck, your little bit of fun has slowed things down, I need to get these people moving…”

 

    “With any luck.” He smirks, though there’s no mirth in his eyes.

 

    They lose each other in the crowd. He doesn’t know if Crawly bothers with warning people, or if he turns around and goes back in hopes of enjoying the carnage, or what. He reminds himself he doesn’t care. They’re really not friends, just because they’ve spent some time in each other’s company. He’d asked for this, hadn’t he? He had looked at him and been gladdened when he ought not have been, at the thought of how he would make life interesting. Well! That will show him, won’t it? Times are interesting enough without a demon to worry about.

 

    He should be punished, perhaps, for having been gladdened. The very idea of it terrifies him. They will punish him this time, or they will punish him next time, as they ought to have punished him at the start. He spared him in the garden and if he had not done, Man might never have had to leave. He spared him from the flood, and… well, he oughtn’t have done. He knew then he oughtn’t to have done it, but he’d seen him and the question came to mind. He’d not known if the rains… if the flood would hurt him or not. And he’d known he didn’t like the wet, even then, he’d known even if he could survive it, it would be a long and miserable experience.

 

    He’d been so… Aziraphale hadn’t been able to _help_ it, that poor snake, his sweet little face, and knowing he would be miserable and he might even be hurt, might be destroyed, might… Demon or not, he’d been so _moved_ , how could he not be? And he had hidden him, he’d hidden him from the Metatron, he can’t believe they didn’t punish him then, they didn’t even punish him along the road to Bela, when he had kissed his scaly brow…

 

    He can’t pretend. Crawly is a demon, he knows that. He’s looked _inside_ him, and seen none of the things which make up an angel’s essence, only smoke and sulfur. And yet, when brimstone had choked the air over the cities of the plain, he should have found it repellent, but instead he only thought… _Crawly_. He’d only wished for him to be all right. He’d only thought… how could he ever find the memory of his essence foul, when he had been ready to put himself at death’s door just to know if any last sliver of the holy remained in him.

 

    He could have killed him… Why wasn’t he punished for _fearing_ that? What a wicked thing to have done, to nurse him, to sit at his bedside and weep, for a _demon_! He ought to have rejoiced in his destruction, not wept at the thought it might have been. He had not seen any iota of who he once was… but that didn’t mean there was nothing there. Buried very deep. Does it? Couldn’t there be some miniscule _shred_ of goodness? And that’s what he’s responding to! It must be!

 

    No. That’s a fool’s errand, to look for the goodness in a demon. To tell himself it might be all right, just this once, to… No, they will punish him, if he is injudicious in his dealings. Crawly is a demon, and that’s that, isn’t it? And Crawly had said business as usual, and that’s how it will be.

 

    That’s how it will be.

 

    And yet, his traitor heart lifts again, when he feels him draw near, his elbow brushing against Aziraphale’s as they cross the sea.

 

    He considers taking the hand which swings so near to his own, and doesn’t. He slips out of the cloak he’s wearing-- not much of one, he supposes, because he’s never needed to wear one for his own comfort-- and he offers it wordlessly.

 

    Crawly tilts his head, the question in his eyes, though not on his lips.

 

    “It’s colder, down here.” Aziraphale shrugs. The walls of water around them remind him of the flood, the barrier that had kept his house safe, when he had sheltered Crawly there… and he wouldn’t have thought of the chill, if he hadn’t known… “I don’t need it.”

 

    “... Thanks.”

 

    “Surprised you’re still with us. Thought you were going to turn around and admire your handiwork…”

 

    “Yeah. Surprise, surprise.” Crawly wraps the cloak tight around himself, his shoulders practically up around his ears, his words muffled by the thick, nubby fabric, his nose down in it for warmth.

 

    “Why did you stay?”

 

    He stares for a moment, then looks away with a huff. “Why? Angel, if you’ve got to ask… It’s time to move on, that’s all. Time for both of us to move on… no one’ll remember me when I slip away later and strike out on my own.”

 

    “They won’t, no.” Aziraphale tries for a smile. “Er. Well. Nor me-- I mean, they won’t remember me. I, of course, shall remember-- Yes.”

 

    “What about you?”

 

    “What about me?”

 

    “Seems cruel, somehow. Sending you to walk with them, knowing you’re not allowed to do anything.”

 

    “N-no-- no, it’s not like that, really--”

 

    “You could have just fixed it all. Without the… bad business there.”

 

    “Yes, but it wouldn’t be Right. People have to do these things themselves… People have to make choices, they have to get by… People have to be in command of human destiny. Once they’re well enough underway, I expect I’ll be told to head elsewhere… Anyhow, I’m not sure I could have done… I’m not sure there was ever any other way.”

 

    “There should’ve been.”

 

    “Yes, but that’s not up to us. That’s up to them. Mind, I’m not the one who gave them free will. Although… perhaps it’s… Well. We never could have guessed then, what would happen.” He says. Couldn’t they have, though? Azrael has existed as long as Aziraphale has, and he’d have no purpose if Man had never left the garden. But it never occurred to him to ask what death was, then. “Neither of us could have.”

 

    Crawly hums, and doesn’t say anything else. The silence is awkward for a while, and then eventually merely companionable, and they don’t speak until the whole caravan comes to a halt, but they walk side by side the whole way.

 

    “You won’t sleep?” Crawly asks, though when Aziraphale shakes his head, he gives a knowing smirk. “Right, silly me.”

 

    “I don’t need sleep.”

 

    “You ought to try it sometime.”

 

    “Perhaps sometime. I’ve tried lying down, in the dark.” He adds.

 

    “Well, next time you should try sleep. It’s nice.”

 

    “It’s like nothing, I thought.”

 

    “Yeah. But nothing’s nice.” Crawly shrugs. “Did you want--”

 

    “No, you keep it. I mean… you could… you could use it to sleep. You’re going to?”

 

    “Figured I might, yeah.”

 

    Aziraphale nods, watching people bed down. He sits, hands folded in his lap, as Crawly spreads the borrowed cloak out, curling up on it and tugging one corner over his shoulder. He watches the way his face slackens, tries to pinpoint the moment he goes from not-sleep to sleep. He’s watched him sleep before, of course, sat over him fretfully that once, but… it was different then, he’d had a serpent’s face. A sweet face, but not a human face. And a human face…

 

    A human face is so like an angel’s face, depending on the order of angel, but _more_. Human faces have variety, nuance, perfect little imperfections. There is something fascinating in human faces.

 

    Even if it’s not a human wearing the face.

 

    He doesn’t seem wholly untroubled. He seems quite cold, in fact. The humans huddle together in groups, with blankets. Grouped around fires here and there. But the two of them are set apart.

 

    Well… no one will know, if their fire wasn’t built in the traditional way.

 

    Or, in a very, very traditional way.

 

    He sets it to burn between them, and watches the way the light and shadows dance over Crawly’s face, his hair. He extinguishes the fire before waking Crawly in the morning.

 

    Breakfast burns his tongue, and he leaves it to Aziraphale to finish-- and Aziraphale doesn’t need to eat, but there is enough, more than, and it would only go to waste. And he’d finished Crawly’s meal before, and it had been fine then… he doesn’t suppose it can be a bad thing to finish something with a bite out of it…

 

    “What’sss it like to you?” Crawly asks.

 

    “Not much like anything, to be honest. Erm… Well, do you-- did you ever try eating, er, Before?”

 

    “Didn’t see the point in it.”

 

    “Precisely. It isn’t like the foods people have, it’s just… made of the same stuff I am, in a sense. It’s well enough for them, to be sustained by the Divine, but it’s not like miracling up bread and fruit, it’s just… I don’t know. It’s fine, of course, but I don’t get the same pleasure out of it a mortal might.”

 

    “Or the same pleasure you would get out of ordinary food?”

 

    “I don’t get pleasure out of it.” He says, but Crawly just grins at him.

 

    “Liesss, from an angel? Dear me.”

 

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

    “I’ve seen you eat.”

 

    He harrumphs a little, and rises to go when the people go.

 

    Sometimes instead of sleeping, Crawly flies off during the night, and rejoins them a couple nights down the road-- well, not ‘road’. Aziraphale’s not sure why he keeps coming back.

 

    He’s not sure why he makes a second attempt at eating the manna, he’s really not. He takes it out of his hand and pats at him rather ineffectively.

 

    “Why would you go and do a thing like that?” He tuts, tossing it off this time.

 

    “Dunno. It tastes like Before. Not-- I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it and I’d never go back to a side that-- I don’t want to go back. It’s just… sometimes I want to remember. The good bits of it.”

 

    “Oh, dear…” He tuts, and wonders what it would be like, if he could just… offer comfort, the way people do. If he could put an arm around him, if he could guide Crawly’s head down to his shoulder. But that’s not what they are… They’re enemies.

 

    “D’you want to know a sssecret?”

 

    He suspects he does not. He brushes the hair back from Crawly’s face. He doesn’t say no.

 

    “I like the burn. Sometimes. Not because it reminds me of Before, just because it burns. I like to feel things. I like to feel like I’m a living thing.”

 

    Aziraphale nods. “Well… that’s important, of course. To know… to try to understand how they do it all, how they live. But… Their lives are about more than pain.”

 

    “Oh, of course.” Crawly flops back down to stretch out on the cloak, stretching luxuriously. “They have _pleasure_ , too. Do you suggest I indulge in _that_ , instead?”

 

    He cracks one eye open, expression sly, and Aziraphale finds himself turning away, something in him spinning at the idea.

 

    “I certainly don’t, no.”

 

    Crawly laughs. “There’s all sorts, you needn’t act as if my merely saying the word is _sssexual_.”

 

    “It is when you say it like that!”

 

    “There are plenty of pleasures, and you ought to experience more of them, if you think it’s so important, understanding people. You liked food. You’d like wine.” He says.

 

    “I do like wine.” Aziraphale’s voice goes soft. “I like it very much, but it always makes me-- But I feel I shouldn’t indulge in it, it isn’t… Right.”

 

    “Makes you dizzy? Warm? Sssilly?”

 

    “Sad. Well-- no. And happy. Erm. Melancholy.”

 

    “It does do, for some, yeah.” Crawly nods. His hand finds Aziraphale’s ankle. “It helps sometimes, when the night feels too long… Wine, or sssleep. Sleep’s a pleasure. In a proper bed, it is.”

 

    “I like it more than nearly anything. Wine, I mean.” He admits, and Crawly’s heart would lurch, if he had one.

 

    He wants to ask, he can’t ask. _Does it make you think of me? Do you remember when we tasted each other to the core, and you had never known wine, because no one had ever made it before, but you knew it was the name of the taste at the heart of me? Do you miss the thing I was, when you drink it? Did you love_ \--

 

    No. Angels love, of course, and perhaps Aziraphale loves him even now in that distant, cold way. An angel is capable of loving and destroying at once. Aziraphale had loved the sinners as well as the righteous, when they’d been in the cities of the plain, and so had the others, and they had called down fire and brimstone just the same. But that sort of love… he can’t try to remember, but he can let the memories come. He can dream about it. He remembers what love was for angels. You loved your Creator with a devotion above all, and then you loved the Host, and the Host was all one mass, and you loved all the rest of Creation, but nothing was personal to you, nothing was meant to be. To pick one other out and love him above the rest was… wrong. And Aziraphale is a proper angel.

 

    Aziraphale is a proper angel, but he still allows Crawly to hold onto him, to trace his thumb over the joint of his ankle, to feel the warmth of his skin.

 

    “I like poetry.” Aziraphale adds. “I do like poems and songs. That’s a pleasure, I suppose, and… it is a pleasure to witness the beauty of Creation and to be in it and-- And those things don’t feel like an _indulgence_. I feel guilty for liking wine too much, I’ve never felt guilty for liking a poem or a flower.”

 

    “If you’ve never felt guilty for liking a poem, you’ve got to broaden your horizons.”

 

    “Oh, hush, you old serpent. I’m not interested in reading _filth_.”

 

    “No, I wouldn’t suppose you’d be the type to give that one a go. Pleasures of the _flesh_.”

 

    “What, and you are?” He asks, a bit more sharply than he’d intended. Well, of course he can’t approve of a demon tempting poor innocent mortals into sin. Sex itself, between humans, is often a beautiful thing, he knows. He knows it in a distant way, and he approves. He approves of the love it fosters, the comfort and joy it brings into their little lives. But he doesn’t think about the concrete nature of the thing. And he doesn’t think it’s on, is it, for an immortal creature to take advantage. Still, he wishes he hadn’t said it quite so-- He wishes he hadn’t said it so that Crawly took his hand away.

 

    “Never have done, no… Put the equipment in, you know, make the old body feel complete, but…”

 

    “You’ve put the equipment in? You mean… you _keep_ it there? On a permanent basis?” He motions vaguely towards the general area.

 

    “Yeah. You want to have a look?”

 

    “No! I certainly don’t want a look at your-- your-- permanent installation!”

 

    “I’ve even used it to urinate.”

 

    “Crawly, _please_.”

 

    “I know I don’t have to, but I did it anyway. I think I probably will do again.”

 

    “I don’t want to hear about that.” Aziraphale makes a face.

 

    “You’ve never even urinated?”

 

    “No! Why would I?!”

 

    “Well, I don’t know. You’re the one who wants to understand people. People spend an awful lot of time urinating. And other things, but, I think it’s easier to just do the one, don’t you? Bit neater. I haven’t bothere--”

 

    “Crawly, I do not wish to have this discussion!”

 

    “I’m only saying, if you’ve never done it, you should just do it once. And, if you just do it once, it should be… You should start with quite a lot of wine, and then, you ought to go out in the cold a bit, and then do it--”

 

    “I’m not going to urinate!”

 

    Crawly laughs. “All right, all right, well I’m not going to make you, but it’s interesting.”

 

    “You’d think anything was interesting once.” Aziraphale sighs.

 

    “Yes, I would.”

 

    If they weren’t enemies, he thinks, he would say ‘Crawly, _you’re_ interesting’. He thinks he would reach out and put a hand on him somewhere companionable. If they weren’t enemies, he thinks, he… Well, he hardly knows, but he likes to think that in a world where they weren’t enemies, Crawly wouldn’t have gone on quite so long about… human bodily functions. _Disgusting_. Humans are fine and wonderful beings, of course, but… what a drawback to the whole plan.

 

    “We ought to get ready to move, if you plan on sticking with us.”

 

    “Everyone’s packing up, what’s the rush? You and I haven’t got anything to pack.”

 

    “I’m going to go see if anyone needs my help, then, and you can laze about if you like.”

 

    If they weren’t enemies, Crawly thinks, he would apologize for teasing so much, and for laughing at the way Aziraphale’s face had been so pinched when he’d said ‘urinate’. He thinks he would go back to holding onto him just to hold on. But he’d been the one who’d gone and said it, hadn’t he? They could have conveniently ignored the fact, if he hadn’t made such a point out of it.

 

    Well, he’d had every right to be upset, of course, but even so, he didn’t have to go so far as to suggest they couldn’t be friendly. And he supposes they still are. They’ve been walking together, and bedding down together, and then walking together again.

 

    It makes sense in a way, they can’t quite mix with humans-- Aziraphale, for all that he tries, just can’t seem to naturally ingratiate himself to anyone. Some people accept his help, but most pick up on the fact that he isn’t like them.

 

    Which is all for the best. There’s one young man who does keep accepting all of Aziraphale’s generous offers of assistance, and who fawns just a little bit too readily when said assistance is provided. Aziraphale might not notice the way that boy looks at him, or assign any meaning to it, but Crawly does, and he doesn’t like it.

 

    Aziraphale’s an _innocent_ after all, isn’t he?

 

    Wait. He’s not meant to be concerned with that.

 

    Well! But it’s definitely right that he should want to be the one to corrupt him, if indeed he were to become any less innocent.

 

    Which isn’t quite what he wants, but… He’s not meant to want anything, is he? Certainly their stark ideological differences have come out and they’ve promised it’s business, they’re… He and Aziraphale are only… They can’t, and even if they could, he wouldn’t...

 

    He scrambles up, shaking out Aziraphale’s cloak, and hurrying over to where he’s helping the bloody doe-eyed boy’s family pack up all their earthly belongings…

 

    “I just wanted to thank you for letting me borrow your cloak to sleep all these nights.” He says, weathering the ‘are you ill?’ look Aziraphale gives him.

 

    “Well, I know you get colder than I do, dear.”

 

    “Still. Should’ve thanked you the first night. But then, I can always count on you to keep me warm, can’t I?”

 

    “Erm, ah… well, of course I-- That is--”

 

    He very pointedly does not look at the boy who’s been making eyes at the angel. Not once. He touches Aziraphale’s chest, and measures out his tone a bit. He wants to stake a claim, not start a scandal.

 

    Well-- not a _claim_. But surely Aziraphale wouldn’t want someone thinking of him as sexually available!

 

    “You just tell me if you need it back. Though… if you don’t _mind_ me holding onto it?” He adjusts the way the cloak is wrapped around himself with a bit more flourish than necessary. “I’ll take good care of it for you.”

 

    “Or it shall take good care of you.” Aziraphale laughs. It’s awkward, but it works. His terrible attempt at wordplay comes off as rather more caring.

 

    “You’re an angel, angel. Should I help you with anything?”

 

    “Oh-- n-no, I think… I’m just done here.”

 

    “Oh.” Crawly grins, and offers his arm. “Looks like.”

 

    “And what was that about?” Aziraphale whispers, as they fall in towards the end of the caravan, back far enough not to be overheard.

 

    “Nothing.”

 

    “It was not nothing, you were very-- you were being very odd! Solicitous, even. What happened to business as usual?”

 

    It’s not very ‘business as usual’ for him to be hanging off of Crawly’s arm, but he isn’t about to complain if Aziraphale does.

 

    “You were all put out, earlier, about the crudity of my conversation. It seemed only polite to put things right. It may be business as usual, but we needn’t be… unpleasant.”

 

    “... Well… You have a point. Apology accepted, but you keep the cloak, really, I don’t need it, and the nights get so cold.”

 

    Eventually, Aziraphale does get an update to his orders. He says an awkward goodbye to Crawly, at the base of the mountain.

 

    He’s not really meant to fly back-- his time with them has come to a temporary end, they’ll make it through the desert without him. Those who survive to see him again won’t know him. He does anyway, just to check… just to see. To be sure that with him gone, everything is just as it ought to be, and then he won’t need to think about it.

 

    Everything is _not_ just as it ought to be. And Crawly is skulking around the outskirts.

 

    “ _Crawly_.” He grabs him by the ear.

 

    “Not me!” Crawly yelps.

 

    “What’s _this_?”

 

    “It wasn’t my idea! _My_ idea was moving everyone around the other side of the mountain while he’s up there, so when he comes back down with the Word from on high, he’ll think we’ve all faffed off to the promised land without hi-- ow! I just _said_ it wasn’t me!”

 

    Aziraphale releases him, pulling back with a deep frown. This is just what they’d fought about, and here he is-- But what was he _supposed_ to think? Golden idols and base chanting? A demon left unchallenged and no one present to offer guidance?

 

    “Who’s idea _was_ it?”

 

    “I don’t know, someone, some human! You think I’d pick something so ugly if it was my doing? He-- Someplace, I’ve been venerated before, I’d make it a snake at least. Not a bloody cow.”

 

    “Of course you would.” Aziraphale means to scoff, and doesn’t quite hit the mark. “Crawly… Sorry.”

 

    “We’re not sorry, remember? It’s fine.”

 

    “No it’s not. I was… rash. I didn’t look at the… the evidence of the thing, it’s really not got the marks of your handiwork. I know you well enough I might have realized-- You were-- That is, before, you… you may have been-- er--”

 

    “Don’t hurt yourself, angel.” Crawly’s face bursts into a grin. “I was _rrr…_ ”

 

    “Right. Well.” He snaps, looking away. “You know, it’s very unattractive, gloating.”

 

    “But I make it look good. I mean, I was _right_.”

 

    “That’s not what I--”

 

    “I was right, and you can’t take it back.”

 

    “Insufferable beast. And here I am trying to make amends for _my_ misbehavior.”

 

    “And you’d be doing a piss-poor job of it if I wasn’t so forgiving.” Crawly leans on Aziraphale’s shoulder until he’s shaken off. “Did you come back for your cloak?”

 

    “Hm? Oh-- no. Just to make sure everyone was fine without me. Which they _aren’t_ , but it’s not my business now.” Aziraphale says, with a little haughty, birdlike sort of a motion. “No, you-- er, you ought to keep it.”

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “Yes. Yes, I don’t-- I don’t need it, and-- I owe you an-- erm-- That is to say, it wouldn’t be-- Or, it would be, if-- So you ought to take it with you.”

 

    “Sure, thanks. I mean… next time, if I’ve still got it, I’ll… I’ll see if you need one then, I suppose.”

 

    “I’m sure by then I-- Well, I’m sure it won’t hurt to ask, of course. In case I’m… heading someplace very cold and you’re heading someplace very hot.”

 

    “I do, on occasion. Can’t be helped. Er-- see you around, Aziraphale.”

 

    “Yes-- yes, I’ll see you.”

 

    They both take off, unseen.

 

    Crawly keeps the cloak until it disintegrates, though it doesn’t go with the lovely new wardrobe he accumulates. Embroidered silks in gold and red and black, the strange garments quickly comfortable. More important than the luxurious clothing he finds himself growing accustomed to, the smoky quartz lenses held in neat wire frames. He no longer has to concentrate his effort every time he meets someone’s eyes, into bidding them not to notice. He doesn’t have to think about it at all.

 

    Even more, the other things he discovers and delights in. The foods he tastes, and the earthy, pale drink, which does and does not remind him of Aziraphale somehow. Paper, which also does and doesn’t.

 

    It’s four hundred years before they meet again, a four hundred years mostly well-spent, but it is good to see him.

 


	6. The Hem of Your Garment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley has never been company before, not proper company...

    “Aziraphale.” Crawly drops gracefully into the seat beside him. He looks different-- paler coloring, his body soft… He’s never had a swell to his belly before, it suits him. Everything about him is more _rounded_.

 

    Much as he likes his own body, he suddenly finds himself wishing he were stuck back as a snake again, just to be able to wrap around him as he is now, to hug those soft curves, to soak in the warmth of him…

 

    “My dear. What are those?” Aziraphale turns to him, reaching up to touch the frames of his lenses.

 

    “I found them out east. Do a good job, don’t they? I mean, they draw a bit of notice themselves, here, but can you see my eyes?”

 

    “No. No, they’re quite effective.” Aziraphale says, dropping his hand from where it hovers near Crawly’s face. He is a bit sorry not to be able to see them, but it’s a handy solution to the problem of keeping humans from noticing… “Quartz?”

 

    Crawly nods. “Very clever, I thought. They look stylish.”

 

    “I wouldn’t know.” He laughs softly. “Makes life easier, I expect. I don’t think people really see the b-- that people really-- You know. When they look at beings like us… what they see and what they can understand-- we’d frighten them if they saw our complete selves. I would just as much as you, I mean. Frighten them.”

 

    “They can understand a lot… a lot about the world. Just not about us.” He sighs. “They’re not around long enough to know what it’s like. Even if they were, they wouldn’t… they wouldn’t understand _us_. _We_ understand us.”

 

    “I suppose we do. Still… oh, it’s still nice walking amongst them, isn’t it? Such capacity for… for living up to their potential! For kindness, for community, for creation… they’ve done so much, haven’t they? They’ve come such a long way from the garden.”

 

    “So… you think-- you think they’re doing well. Doing all right?”

 

    “Oh, yes. Of course there are… moral defects here and there, but they’re still young, they’re still finding their way.”

 

    Crawly nods. “So what have you been doing.”

 

    “Oh, what I can, what I can. Listening to philosophical debates, voicing a little agreement where appropriate… And-- well. Poetry. Copying down poems. I just think-- they ought to be remembered. Oh, and I try, you know, but I’ve lost so much, and… and I know this isn’t a _priority_ , when they do mention all sorts of false gods and such, so it isn’t as if the poems are edifying or great works of faith--”

 

    “Great works of faith for the authors, maybe.”

 

    “Oh, I don’t know about that. I mean… you ought to hear what they think gods are like. First of all, _plural_. And the drinking and the sex and the _pettiness_ , I mean, the Almighty is not petty!”

 

    “No, maybe not, but there are petty angels. And petty demons, no call to be making that face at me. My point is, there are petty beings of enormous power who play with their lives! You and I among them! And we drink.”

 

    “We do drink. But it’s not-- But we don’t-- Er. We don’t-- I mean--”

 

    “Look. Mankind was made in the image of an all powerful Creator, yeah?”

 

    “Yes. You were there. I mean, for some of it.” Aziraphale plucks at his chiton.

 

    “And people, these people, their friends and their loved ones… they make mistakes, they fall in love, they fight, they have sex, they drink wine. And they imagine their gods do the same, well… then in a sense, haven’t they hit on something in the nature of the universe?”

 

    “Yes, but they’ve done it backwards!”

 

    “Yes, but they’ve done it!”

 

    “They’re meant to wish to hold themselves to higher standards.” He huffs.

 

    Crawly gestures to the men debating politics. “Aren’t they?”

 

    “I don’t hardly know.” Aziraphale lets out a deep sigh, rising. “Well, come on, then. You’ll come ‘round to mine for tonight, I’ll show you a bit of the place. I mean… can’t have you just wandering about without a roof over your head.”

 

    “Oh. Yes, all right-- one night, I’m sure we can… manage that.”

 

    He offers his hand and Crawly takes it. They walk through the marketplace like so. They hadn’t… they hadn’t held hands before, really. They walked arm in arm a bit once, Crawly remembers it keenly, he remembers the press of him close by and how easily they’d walked in rhythm with each other, their strides coming to match. Their strides come to match now, though his legs are longer. Aziraphale’s hands are soft and warm, soft as the rest of him looks now, as warm as Crawly remembers him being, when he’d held him in his robes before...

 

    Aziraphale has money-- he throws a couple of coins into a beggar’s bowl, he buys this and that, it’s the oddest thing, watching him just…

 

    Engage in commerce, really.

 

    “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have money.”

 

    “Odd tutoring jobs.”

 

    “You _earn_ it? I thought you might have just… _made_ it.”

 

    “You can’t miracle up money, it throws off the whole system, do you not understand how money works? If you just keep making and making it, it’s not worth anything! Of course I earn it. And then I put it back so that people can feed their families. Do you make money?”

 

    “Shouldn’t I?”

 

    “No, it’s got to _come_ from someplace!”

 

    “It does come from someplace. It comes from me.”

 

    “That’s no good, it has to be real.” He tuts.

 

    Well, that’s fine. Mostly Crawly just makes the things he wants, and skips the money part entirely. But some things are better when they’re real, he thinks… Still, it shouldn’t be difficult to make sure the money he makes does come from someplace. Plenty of people with treasures beyond what they could ever make use of, it’s only a matter of rearranging the universe to put a bit of something shiny into his own purse.

 

    Aziraphale’s house is as modest as the first one he’d been to, little more than a hut on the outskirts of town, but with a view down to the sea from a high cliff.

 

    “It’s very nice, this.” Crawly gestures.

 

    “Isn’t it? It isn’t the nature of the thing to stay in one place for very long, but if I did, I’d like… I don’t know. Maybe not this. But something _like_ this. Green fields and farms nearby and a view of the sea… from high up, where you can feel the winds come in smelling of salt, and if you stood on the edge and spread your wings and leaned forward, it would just… hold you up.”

 

    “Do you come out here and spread your wings?”

 

    “ _Oh, yes_.” He sighs dreamily. “At night. Sometimes I don’t even take off, I just feel it… I just like to feel it. It’s such a lovely little place. And the water here is wonderful. It’s all wonderful…”

 

    The breeze kicks at his curls, and he looks… he looks beautiful. He looks so _pleased_. It seems unfair to think he should ever be asked to give up a home that pleases him so, but of course he will be. They are nomads by nature, aren’t they? Someday they will both move on to the next place. It just seems a shame if he won’t have a view like this, a place to taste the wind and spread his wings.

 

    “Do you _swim_?”

 

    “Hm? Oh-- oh, no, no… Not really, no. I’ve waded, and I’ve skimmed, and I’ve seen the-- er, the big… the big fish things they’ve got ‘round here leap about a bit, but no. Anyway, come in, come in. I didn’t do the shopping for nothing, you’re company.”

 

    Crawly follows him inside. He’s never been _company_ before. He doesn’t think he was _company_ during the flood.

 

    It’s just one room, and the inside is as familiar as the outside. A bit bigger-- more shelves, and this time there are scrolls of parchment and vellum and even papyrus, alongside a few of the old tablets. On the little table under one window, there’s a scroll and a tablet sitting side by side, and a little bottle of dark ink, a quill.

 

    “You’re copying it down in the new alphabet?” He asks, touching the empty space on the parchment. He lets one fingertip run over the ink bottle.

 

    “Oh-- no, dear, don’t--” Aziraphale begins, and he takes his hand away.

 

    “Being careful.”

 

    “Come and be comfortable.” He motions to the one thing his old house hadn’t had-- well, one of the couple of things. There was another table at standing height in the far corner, and some cupboards, a little kitchen area of sorts. But this, the low bed beside a brazier, that’s very welcome. “And let me get your feet, before you put them up.”

 

    He lounges, feet obligingly hanging off the edge. Aziraphale brings over a big shallow tub, he’d filled the water from a jug from his little kitchen corner which could not have contained so much water, Crawly is bracing himself for cold when he dips a toe in. It’s warm, he’d have thought using a miracle to heat it might have rendered it holy somehow and it hasn’t. It’s just…

 

    It’s just very welcome, actually. He sinks both feet in with a sigh, drawing Aziraphale’s attention and a groan.

 

    “You couldn’t wait for me to get the linens, you’re just going to muck it up?”

 

    “I can un-muck it.” He wiggles his toes.

 

    “I don’t know why I bother. You could, of course, just banish the dirt from your heels before putting them up on my furniture, and yet I’ve gone to the trouble…”

 

    “Oh, come on. Come on. Water’s fine.” He waves a hand, the water clearing of whatever dust has left his skin to become one with it.

 

    Aziraphale pulls his chair up opposite to join him, and this time his groan isn’t irritation.

 

    “Right?”

 

    “We could have soaked after getting clean, that’s the sensible way of doing things.”

 

    “Oh, sensible.” He scoffs. “This is nice, isn’t it? I tell you, if I was a snake still, I’d want to curl up in this tub completely, just soak in it.”

 

    “Tub’s not big enough for all of you.”

 

    “Yeah, but I could make it be, or you could.”

 

    “Mm. It is nice…” Aziraphale admits. “I suppose a proper soak in hot water would be… Well. But it seems very extravagant.”

 

    “Wouldn’t be a temptation if it wasn’t.” Crawly licks his lips, bobbing his eyebrows.

 

    “Oh, you.” He chucks one of the linens at him, shaking his head. “I’m not miracling up a man-sized tub for you, there’s no room for it.”

 

    “Outside, then. I’ll do it, if you’ll join me.”

 

    “I will not.”

 

    “Ssspoilsport.”

 

    “I most certainly am.” Aziraphale says primly, that same smug holier-than-thou bastard look on his new face.

 

    The new face does suit it, he has to admit that. It looks very Aziraphale. The new body suits him even moreso-- had he been in some accident so terrible that they’d needed to send him back in a new body, or had he merely resculpted himself to suit the time and place?

 

    Despite that look, and the fact he’d thrown a linen at him already, when they’ve soaked a while, Aziraphale spreads the other linen across his lap and motions to him.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Feet. Up here. Where I might dry them?”

 

    “Might you?” Crawly looks skeptical.

 

    “It is what a host does, I’m given to understand. The sooner you’re done with that, the sooner I can feed you.”

 

    “You do know I don’t--”

 

    “Don’t need to, yes, nor I, but… well… I don’t much _have_ company.” Aziraphale shrugs. “It’s lonely. And tutoring’s worse than loneliness, honestly, you should see some of the little monsters. In the absence of having a friend, I thought-- why not an enemy?”

 

    Crawly puts his feet up in Aziraphale’s lap and allows the toweling-off to ensue. Against all better judgment, he decides he may as well return the favor.

 

    “Up you get, then.” He spreads the other linen across his own lap. “I won’t ask twice, you know, so if you want the nice treatment, you’d best come on and get it.”

 

    “Thank you, my dear.” Aziraphale says, as if he’d offered very nicely. As if he was not what he is.

 

    He lets his feet drip just a moment before bringing them into Crawly’s lap, and he rubs them down, as seems only polite. And… as seems like the one way they’re sure to keep in contact after Aziraphale had finished with him. He thinks about holding his hand in the marketplace, and how soft it had been. The give he could tell he would feel if he had squeezed… His feet are not quite so soft, but he thinks they’re softer than they _were_ , somehow fuller.

 

    He wants to wind around him until he’s lost himself completely, he wants to fall asleep warmed and pillowed by him, a much pleasanter vice than any meal… but he thinks there are things Aziraphale might have indulged him if he were a snake, that he won’t indulge him when he’s shaped like a man. Not because he ever mistook him for more animal than he was, but because it’s easy enough not to think of some things. When a demon’s in a man’s shape, Crawly thinks, you suspect him of lust, even if it’s only the same thing he felt as a serpent.

 

    Anyway, it’s not the same when you can’t coil yourself around perfectly, he’s not got enough bones for what he’d really like to do. If he were vertebrae all the way down, he could just… _fit_. He could sleep easy in a soft, warm lap.

 

    But he won’t.

 

    With the linens and tub cleared away, Crawly reclines alone. Aziraphale pulls item after item from the basket he’d carried in the marketplace. Cheese, garlic, an egg, honey, olive oil… Crawly watches with lazy fascination as he turns this disparate assortment of things into a creamy mess smeared onto bread also pulled from the basket. Aziraphale hands him a glass of wine first, before joining him on the low bed with the plate.

 

    He wonders if it was big enough for two before, or if he’d even possessed such a piece of furniture before he knew he really would have company.

 

    “You’re not _really_ lonely, though.” He says, not making a move towards the food.

 

    “Why would I say I was if I wasn’t?”

 

    “I just mean… you’ve got the Host.” Crawly shrugs.

 

    “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Aziraphale doesn’t sound like there’s any ‘of course’ about it. “Well, they are… certainly present. A bit. But… I’m far from home. I am tasked with wandering. The others… they get their assignments here and they come down and they do them, and they are recalled. I’m not.”

 

    “Good for you, Earth’s much more interesting than I recall it being upstairs.”

 

    “Yes, it is, but… there’s just a distance. Between them and me. And… it isn’t the same as it was before-- Before. Because so many are missing. Perhaps if the Host had never been split, it wouldn’t matter that I am so far… I don’t know. They’re still there, the ones who haven’t been-- They’re there, and I am here, and I can feel them, it’s just… distant.”

 

    “Oh.”

 

    “Were you going to eat?”

 

    “Yeah, yeah… just-- I remember before. You just made it all happen. This time you got the ingredients… you cooked.”

 

    “Well… assembled, at least.”

 

    “Last time you fed me.” He flashes what he hopes is a very winning smile.

 

    “Last time you didn’t have hands. And I’d nearly killed you! I did think I owed you some consideration after that…”

 

    Crawly opens his mouth. He waits for Aziraphale to refuse him, to tell him he is lazy and terrible and wicked. Sometimes he likes it quite a lot, likes the way he sounds as if he doesn’t quite disapprove only he wants to say _something_ and they’re really only teasing each other… but there are times it stings. This would sting. To be pushed away now would…

 

    “Oh, just _one_.” Aziraphale sighs, and feeds him a bite. It’s a lot of things at once, salty and spicy and sweet, creamy… goaty, a bit, but in a nice way.

 

    “Mm-- thank you, angel.” He says, with a sort of dutiful sweetness and an edge of play, once he’s swallowed.

 

    He only really needs one bite. But he feeds Aziraphale a taste, and then another. He would have been happy as a serpent to simply open his jaws wide and be catered to, but it is nice… it is nice to be able to feed Aziraphale this time around. He really does _enjoy_ it.

 

    “I didn’t know you could be lonely.” Crawly admits, wiping a bit of the cheese spread from the corner of Aziraphale’s full lips. He licks the tiny smear from his own thumb. Aziraphale doesn’t notice.

 

    “Of course I can be.”

 

    “Sorry.”

 

    “You don’t have to be. You… you’re cut off from them completely, I certainly don’t expect your pity.”

 

    “Understanding, then.”

 

    “Understanding.” Aziraphale smiles cautiously. He reaches out, his fingers tangling with Crawly’s. “And you have mine. Even if I can only understand so much.”

 

    “I never really fit, in-- Before. It’s not so bad.”

 

    “My dear boy, you needn’t lie to me. I never really fit in, and yet even this small separation aches in me. It hurt to have half the Host torn away from me when the battle-- It hurts. Even if you never fit in, even if you would not choose to return. Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt.”

 

    “It’s a hurt I can live with.” He shrugs. “Some days I don’t think of it.”

 

    “Yes. And other days?”

 

    “I probe at the place where it was. And it does ache. Aziraphale… when you feel the Host… do you feel the missing half always?”

 

    “No… but I can always find it. I--” He stops himself, closes himself off, pulls his hand back. _No_. This is a pain he _cannot_ share with a demon, even a demon like Crawly.

 

    There are no other demons like Crawly, he doesn’t think.

 

    Even with him, there are things… this could never be understood, this comes from a place no one understands. It’s his own fault, he’d been in the wrong, he’d done this to himself, but he can’t explain it and he can’t share it.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Nothing.”

 

    “Aziraphale. I feel the loss of it all the time. Every single one of us is cut off, we’re not a half-Host. We’re just drifting. You can tell me, I-- You can tell me.”

 

    “This isn’t something you can understand.”

 

    What can he say? What can he say that Crawly would ever understand? He had fled the battle rather than take up arms against his old brothers, but he had still sided with Lucifer, or he would have been acting as Aziraphale had, healing… He wouldn’t have been punished the way he had been. Aziraphale…

 

    Aziraphale bears _guilt_.

 

    He had been warned, a warning that came down from one closer to some of Lucifer’s closest. He had been told angel would turn against angel, and he hadn’t told anyone else, he had thought it was preposterous. And then, when the war came…

 

    He can find the one torn thread, one he couldn’t save, one he may have owed his own life to, because when it began, he knew exactly what was happening and what he needed to do. But he had not been able to return the favor. He hadn’t saved his _friend_.

 

    “I can’t understand? I’ve been up there. You’re the one who’s never been where I am.”

 

    “I deserve my half-exile, Crawly. I failed in my duty. And I failed the Host. I failed-- I failed. And so I’m down here. But I’m not like you, either. There’s no one who can understand me. It isn’t your fault you can’t, it isn’t-- it isn’t I don’t--”

 

    “Because of that stupid thing with the sword? Or… or because you spared me?”

 

    “Before all that. Before.” He shakes his head. “Before time, I don’t know how long before… it’s nothing to do with you, with anything you’ve done or with any of my dealings with you, so it _really_ isn’t any of your business how I’ve disgraced myself, my rank, my sphere, the Host, my--”

 

    Aziraphale cuts himself off, clamping a hand down over his mouth and looking to the side.

 

    “Creator?” Crawly whispers. “Come off it, if you’d done that, you’d be with me.”

 

    “No. I never disgraced Him. Or I would be, yes, I would have Fallen.” Aziraphale whispers back. “Tell me, demon, what passes for friendship in Hell?”

 

    Crawly frowns. Earlier he was _company_ , now he’s _demon_. So that’s how it is today…

 

    “My old friends don’t much stay in touch. I wouldn’t know.” He says, and hopes his voice doesn’t sound as brittle as he feels. “What’s friendship like in Heaven nowadays?”

 

    He feels guilty seeing Aziraphale wince. Aziraphale was never popular, he’d admitted only just now to never fitting in, he didn’t need to be cruel to him-- and yet, Aziraphale didn’t need to call him ‘demon’ like that, not the fond kind of teasing way he sometimes does, when Crawly calls him ‘angel’ and they both smile over it, but like… Like it’s all he is.

 

    “I haven’t known that in a long time.” Aziraphale says, so dully that he can’t take it.

 

    “Aziraphale-- I shouldn’t have--”

 

    “Don’t be silly, you’ve done nothing. We’re enemies.”

 

    He rolls up from his reclining position and into Aziraphale, lying across his thighs, arms around his middle. He is soft. And warm.

 

    “I’m company.” He says. “Today at least, today I’m company, I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

 

    “You had every right, I believe I broke hospitality first.” Aziraphale pats at him, surprised into the admission. “Dear… oh, and dear me, you-- you mustn’t apologize so _fervently_ , it doesn’t look very business as usual, does it?”

 

    “I’m company.” Crawly repeats. “Just today… just today it isn’t.”

 

    “There… there now, just-- just today, no one who matters needs know, if it’s just today.”

 

    Aziraphale pulls his lenses off, very gently, and sets them to the side. With those out of the way, he goes ahead and changes his shape with a shudder, and winds all six feet of himself around Aziraphale, to much surprised sputtering.

 

    “Oh, _really_ , you… You _are_ an odd creature!” He huffs, but his hand curls around Crawly’s head, almost protective, and he relaxes into his coils, and strokes his uppermost back.

 

    “Read to me.” Crawly demands.

 

    “From what? You’re pinning me down, dear.”

 

    “Miracle it.”

 

    “Very demanding, aren’t you?” He tuts and rolls his eyes, and summons nothing to his hand, except to pick up the second-to-the-last bite from the neglected plate, to hold out to him.

 

    “Simply beastly.” Crawly agrees, and he opens his mouth and wraps his tongue around the morsel, feeling some satisfaction as Aziraphale pops the final bite into his own mouth.

 

    “Wicked old thing.” Aziraphale says, and this time it is fond and familiar. “Is it silly if I’ve missed you? I mean, this you…”

 

    “You have?”

 

    “Well… not that there’s anything wrong with your more human shape. It’s very well-done and I suppose it’s much more convenient… I do like seeing you so, I only mean… I don’t know. Not-- It’s a bit silly. It’s just nostalgic, isn’t it? You here, and like this, and… sharing a plate. And you asking me to read to you…”

 

    “Will you, then?”

 

    Aziraphale attempts a harrumph and falls short. He winds up reciting to him from memory instead.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Crawly doesn’t stay in Greece long. He regains his shape come morning and feels all the better for it when he realizes everything works as it should, and then he moves on. Evidently, shortly thereafter, so does Aziraphale-- he sees him again in Indonesia of all places, some seventy years hence.

 

    He hears his voice first, the unmistakable tones of his angel… Well, not his. Not _his_. But he hears him around a bend in the road, cooing to what must be an extraordinary handsome animal, for how many times he must say it.

 

    “ _There_.” Aziraphale’s voice sounds well-pleased. “You _do_ like me, you _do_ like to be pet, dear little thing. You’re very gentle, really, aren’t you? Yes, you are… Handsome boy, do you know, you remind me of a very old friend?”

 

    He moves as silently as he can, something squeezing down on the innermost core of him, filling him with hope and dread and longing in equal parts as he moves around the trees.

 

    The black white-lipped python has draped itself over him, much to the angel’s apparent delight.

 

    Crawly leaves without speaking to him. He wouldn’t know what to say.


	7. Old Situations, New Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly just the worst for Aziraphale, honestly.

    “Well, it’s the writing on the wall, isn’t it?” Aziraphale shrugs. They stand side by side and watch Babylon burn, knowing it won’t burn long. In a matter of days, really, daily life will be as it was before the city fell to the Mede. He turns towards Crawly, their eyes meeting, and it all hits him.

 

    Love.

 

    How could he not have realized? He’s so used to tuning it out, the background noise of being around people, he’s always feeling love. He’s never thought to probe much at it, but he knows what it is. And love is love is love, to him, whatever the kind, it’s just never been _his_ before, except in a general sort of way.

 

    But he had felt this during the flood, hadn’t he? He had, and he had pushed it aside and told himself it didn’t matter. When he had been deep in the sulfur-choked essence of Crawly, he had felt it, and there were no humans anywhere near them, no living ones.

 

    He loves him not in the general way an angel is meant to love even his enemies, but the way you love a friend. A dear personal friend.

 

    He imagines his love as a physical thing, and he imagines that he can pick it up-- carefully, with distaste-- and put it in a heavy wooden box. He imagines that the box might be locked. And then he ignores that terrible love.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Crawly had saved Aziraphale a seat before he’d even known they were in the same place. He’d hoped.

 

    No, not hoped. Of course not hoped.

 

    He hadn’t brought up Indonesia, when they had met in Babylon. And because he had not brought it up then, he thinks he never can. It would be odd enough to bring up seeing him when he hadn’t said hello in Indonesia once, it would beg the question of why he had avoided him.

 

    _Friend_.

 

    Of course they aren’t. They can’t be. They haven’t been _friends_ since he was someone else, with another name and another body, they were friends Before, but they’re not friends now. Aziraphale isn’t allowed to keep friendships with demons, no matter who he once was. For that matter, Crawly’s certainly not allowed to keep friendships with angels, but at least if Hell wished to know what he was doing hanging about with one of the Host, he could claim to be trying to win him over. Conversion only goes one way, for their kind. Kinds.

 

    He still lays a cloak over the seat next to his own.

 

    He waves, when he spots him. He doesn’t think about how he’d known. He doesn’t think about the way Aziraphale’s face lights up, how graceful his step. Anyone seeing him ascend the steps of the amphitheater so, they should know he isn’t what he seems, they should be able to tell there is something ethereal about him. He bears his weight as if it’s no weight at all.

 

    “I thought I--” He begins, and then stops himself. “I thought I would see what the fuss is about, theatre. Funny-- funny seeing you here, I-- it’s been a while.”

 

    “It’s felt like an age.” Crawly grins. It hasn’t been. Compared to some of the lengths of time they’ve spent not seeing each other, it hasn’t been. It’s felt so…

 

    “Hasn’t it?” Aziraphale doesn’t _grin_ , exactly. He smiles, bright and open, the kind of smile that lets the light in him out. How do people look at him and see just another human?

 

    “I thought I’d…” He moves the cloak over and gestures to the seat, and Aziraphale sits, graceful as ever. “It’s funny, I thought I’d save a spot.”

 

    Aziraphale lets out a breath. “You’ve felt it, too?”

 

    “Only recently. Only since Babylon. No… no, I did know. The last time we were here.” He nods. “I could feel that you were on the island… I didn’t know until I saw you and it was like… of course. You know?”

 

    “Yes, I thought that…” He smiles for a moment, relieved, and then something troubled takes him. “But I thought I felt you once before, and we never-- Well, I expect we must have just missed each other.”

 

    “Yes.” Crawly looks away guiltily. “I expect we must have. But-- but I didn’t know what the feeling meant, then. I didn’t understand it before Babylon.”

 

    “It was like a magnet then.” Aziraphale’s fingers play over the rolled up cloak that sits between them, a scant barrier between their thighs. “When we were outside the city, and I… It was as if for days I had been waiting for a storm to break over a dry land. I could feel the gathering energy of it, I could feel how heavy with water the clouds had grown, I could feel lightning waiting to strike. Do you know the oddest thing?”

 

    “What?” He asks. He knows it, though. He’d felt it himself, even stronger than the sense of a storm-that-isn’t-a-storm gathering. He would walk down a street and hear the whisper of parchment rustled where there was none. He would pass through the marketplace and smell that thing he’d once tasted in Aziraphale and never quite found anywhere else. He would lounge on a rooftop at night and feel as if there was a fire burning across the city, before there really were fires everywhere.

 

    “There was a wind sometimes. But it only ever touched me. A wind, like--” Aziraphale turns and looks down towards the stage, the skene. He bites his lip. “And I could smell smoke, only not… not really. I knew it wasn’t real. Just… sometimes. I would pass by a door and…”

 

    “Smoke. Suppose that’s all I am nowadays.”

 

    “You didn’t say goodbye.” It’s barely a whisper. He can’t have heard it. Aziraphale can’t have said… Can’t be _upset_ with him for...

 

    “What?”

 

    “Nothing, sorry. I must be feeling-- odd. And wind, is what I meant to say. Not only smoke.” He smooths his chiton over his lap with brisk, tiny motions. “Smoke _on_ the wind, which I suppose is appropriate for you.”

 

    He _is_ upset with him for it. But _why_? True, normally they said goodbye when they parted, they acknowledged that one or the other of them was moving on, but there was no _obligation_ to, they were nomads. And they were enemies!

 

    Enemies who saved seats at the theatre and washed each other’s feet and fed each other and…

 

    But enemies!

 

    “Am I supposed to apologize for something?”

 

    “You didn’t say goodbye.” Aziraphale repeats. And this time, it’s not just loud enough that Crawly can’t pretend he didn’t hear that right, it’s loud enough that a few of the men sitting around them turn to look. “When you were in my house, those years ago. Where I bathed you, and I fed you, and I let you lay your head on my breast as I recited poetry to you, and you slept in my bed, and I went to draw water in the morning and came back and you were gone. Do you know I waited? Do you know I _worried_? Though why I should worry for you, I’m sure I don’t know.”

 

    “Young men at that age are very fickle.” One of the other patrons says.

 

    “Excuse me?” Aziraphale turns, with a perfectly offended little sniff. “I don’t really expect you to understand our private business, Sir.”

 

    “Some years ago, what was he, twenty? Nineteen? Or younger still? They’re all like that, that’s all.”

 

    “I was not some _boy_ , and he is _not_ my teacher.” Crawly adds, torn between amusement and irritation-- and guilt. Why on earth would Aziraphale have worried? They didn’t _worry_ for each other, what could possibly have even hurt him? “Angel, look-- I didn’t think you wanted me around. You said I could stay the night to have a roof over my head and we’d figure it out in the morning, morning came, I figured it out.”

 

    “Yes, but-- I said _we_ \-- You ran off and you didn’t say word one to me! And you left town. And you-- We always… we always said goodbye before. Or at least we said we might be moving on somewhere, we-- we allowed for the possibility of it, you-- you’ve never skulked away without a word before! Not without saying you might.”

 

    “Do we owe each other that now?”

 

    Aziraphale leans in to whisper-- in a language far, far older than Greek. “We’ve begun feeling each other when we come to the same place, and you don’t think you owe me the common courtesy of a goodbye? You don’t think I should ask that much of you?”

 

    He refuses to allow himself to tear up, the word burns him, it’s bitter on his tongue. There are all manner of languages he has and will and could say goodbye in. In his-- in _theirs_ , for Crawly was an angel once-- he cannot bear it. There is no human language in which ‘goodbye’ feels half so final as it does in his native tongue. He remembers the day ‘goodbye’ was invented, he hadn’t understood its gravity then.

 

    And he… oh, _foolish_ thing that he is, he’s come to love this demon, who doesn’t even understand why someone who had offered him hospitality might wish to know whether or not he’s leaving town, and to befriend him is a betrayal of everyone who perished in the battle with Lucifer… but he is the closest thing to a friend that Aziraphale _has_.

 

    “Let’s just try to enjoy the entertainment.” He says, when Crawly offers no strong defense of his actions.

 

    “Did you stop at any market stalls?”

 

    “No.”

 

    “Would you like some wine?”

 

    “ _No_.”

 

    “Oh, come on, you know you would.” Crawly entreats, holding a cup out to him. “You wouldn’t leave me sitting here with two cups, looking a perfect fool. You like wine!”

 

    “You left me feeling a perfect fool.” Aziraphale folds his arms. “Expecting consideration from you. And then… and then you simply vanish. I know now I oughtn’t to have imagined my hospitality meant something to you, but I did allow myself to think…”

 

    “Aziraphale--”

 

    “Shush, you rude thing, they’ll be starting now.”

 

    Crawly allows himself to be shushed. The first play feels as if it takes ages. He expects Aziraphale to hate the theatre, being as it’s all a lot of that pagan nonsense he disapproves of, except he does like poetry even when it’s not properly worshipful of the Almighty, even when it’s got false gods in it and such. He’s not sure for a long time if Aziraphale is enraptured with what’s going on on the stage, or just giving him the cold shoulder. He’s not sure until he looks over and Aziraphale is actually in tears.

 

    Too much feeling in him for an angel… that’s always been his problem.

 

    “Here.” Crawly whispers, and presses the cup into his hand, and this time Aziraphale accepts it.

 

    “Thank you, dear.” He murmurs, taking a sip.

 

    Crawly pats his back, and when he isn’t shrugged off or batted away, he lets his hand rest there, right over the place his wing would sprout. He thinks of the searing Divine pain the last time he’d felt the touch of one. He thinks of the very first time, when their wings had touched, and something in him had opened, and Aziraphale had answered, he’d answered, and everything about them had been… _there_. They sank into each other there where they touched, it was only a moment, but what a moment! And the last time they’d seen each other Upstairs before the war, the last safe moment he had had, he was in the circle of Aziraphale’s wings… they’d said goodbye then and he had thought it was forever.

 

    Does he owe him goodbyes each time? What does that make them? He hasn’t even heard him say the word properly since Before. They’ve always used human languages on earth…

 

    He keeps his palm pressed flat to Aziraphale’s shoulderblade and tries to conjure up the memory of being burned by that Holiness in him.

 

    “Sweet?” He offers, when the play has ended, and the applause.

 

    “What’s that?” Aziraphale turns, from where his attention had still been idly aimed stagewards.

 

    “I asked if you would like a sweet.” He plucks one from the little parcel of them he’d bought, at the stall beside the wine-seller.

 

    “I don’t know. I don’t really need to eat…”

 

    “You never have, and yet I know you’ve done thrice.”

 

    “Manna doesn’t count.” Aziraphale makes a face.

 

    “Twice then. It’s all the same to me. Anyway, no one needs to eat these. It’s just seeds and honey. It’s just to taste nice. Or do you not approve of that?”

 

    “... I don’t think it’s wrong for people to have little things that make them happy, of course. But I’m not… I’m not sure I ought--”

 

    “I just wanted to taste them. Curiosity.”

 

    “Curiosity will get you into all kinds of trouble.” Aziraphale tsks.

 

    “How much more trouble can I possibly get in, at this point?”

 

    “A fair point.”

 

    “Anyway, I’ve got too many. More than I need, at any rate. You wouldn’t want them to go to waste, would you?”

 

    Crawly holds one of the little sticky-sweet balls of seeds up to Aziraphale’s lips, taking in the way his eyes widen, the moment of hesitation. Crawly is close enough with the sweet that when Aziraphale licks his lips, his tongue brushes the confection, and he leans back, surprised.

 

    “Oh-- well… that one should be mine, I suppose.” He laughs, nervous. “Now I’ve licked it.”

 

    “Definitely.” He grins.

 

    “Erm-- I can-- I _ought_ \-- I am _capable_ \--” Aziraphale’s cheeks are rosy as it is, he doesn’t blush… but he has the appearance of doing so, which his stammering over the thing doesn’t do anything to help. “I’ll feed myself, shall I?”

 

    “Oh. Right. ‘Cause you’ve got hands.” Crawly doesn’t blush, either, but he doesn’t think it makes much difference.

 

    They share an awkward laugh, hands brushing as the sweet is passed off. He watches in rapt attention as Aziraphale rolls it over with his tongue, tasting, considering. The next play starts, and Crawly’s attention remains riveted to Aziraphale’s profile, watching the most minute shift of his mouth as he sucks at the thing, as he feels it on his tongue or against the inside of his cheek. As he chews. As he swallows.

 

    He tries to focus on the play after that, but he’s already missed so much of the plot that he really doesn’t get it, and the jokes aren’t enough without knowing what’s going on with it.

 

    “Aziraphale.” He hisses. When Aziraphale turns to mouth ‘what?’ at him, Crawly pops a second sweet into his mouth. He does it fast, before he can overthink it, he doesn’t let his fingertips trespass long on Aziraphale’s lips.

 

    He licks his fingers, and takes another for himself, not because he really wants one, but because he wants to be tasting the thing Aziraphale is tasting, he wants them to be sharing this experience, he wants…

 

    He wants to crawl into his mouth and live there, only when the idea coalesces into words it sounds too weird even for a demon. Not that, then, but something. Something like…

 

    Like when they’d been one in essence, Before, senses co-mingled, his whole being wrapped up in Aziraphale. Something he now knows is beyond his grasp, he could die trying…

 

    He refills their cups more times than he ought to be able to, but if Aziraphale notices, he doesn’t chide him for it. When Crawly offers more little sweets, Aziraphale accepts them. They stay for the whole day’s performances.

 

    “I think I like it, the theatre.” Aziraphale says, when Crawly offers him a hand up. Not that he needs it, but he takes it just the same, before picking up Crawly’s cloak and draping it over his shoulder just so, fussing with the pin. He doesn’t have to do that, either, but…

 

    But it’s a neat way of saying that Crawly’s apology of honey and wine has been accepted, that his forgiveness is granted.

 

    “Thank you, angel.” Crawly whispers.

 

    “There. Can’t have you getting cold. At least the winters are mild here and the nights aren’t like the desert, but I know you’re sensitive…”

 

    “I get by all right. I-- You get used to it.”

 

    “Do you?” Aziraphale frowns, and he takes Crawly’s arm.

 

    “It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

 

    “If you say.”

 

    “I-- I do better, in this form. Probably all in the mind, ‘s just my body.” He switches languages, it’s easier than affecting everyone around them not to hear. “Either way it’s my body. But it’s not so bad anymore.”

 

    “Are you here long?”

 

    “Maybe. Through the winter. You?”

 

    “No. Egypt. Erm… We might-- Tomorrow night, before I go, we might have a drink together. If we’re not too terribly busy. And then I shall be in Egypt a while. I’m very excited to go, actually. But it was nice to be back here, I enjoy the isles, the breezes… to look out over the sea. I’ll miss that, but… well, I shall always be back eventually, I’m sure.”

 

    “Oh, sure. Well… if business takes me your way, we’ll do it again. But I could carve out some time tomorrow night. A proper-- a proper farewell.

 

    “The _lovers_ have made up.” One of the men they’d been sat near says to another, as they pass each other leaving the theater.

 

    “I’d be quick to make up, too, if I was getting on in years.” The other says, with a critical look over Crawly. “I’d have replaced him by now.”

 

    “Getting on in years! That, from an old man!”

 

    “Funny, you calling him old.” Aziraphale makes a very game attempt at not laughing at his indignation.

 

    “I don’t _look_ a day over twenty… something.”

 

    “Mm. Thirty-something, at this angle. Suits you better, anyway.”

 

    “Preposterous. I am youthful and beautiful and beardless. I’m a catch! If you were a pervy old scholar, you’d snap me up in a heartbeat over some kid.”

 

    “Certainly.”

 

    “I notice neither of them has an adoring young thing hanging off his arm, I tell you what, I think he’s just jealous. ‘Lovers’, he says, and like _that_. Lovers! Am I not young and beautiful enough still to pass for the beloved?”

 

    “You’re older than _dirt_ , my dear.”

 

    “So’re you.”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “Well… it doesn’t matter, I don’t look it!”

 

    “As you like.” Aziraphale says, in a tone which suggests all is very much _not_ as Crawly likes.

 

    “The cheek!”

 

    “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He smiles, and pats Crawly’s arm before parting from him, leaving him to fume over the slight.

 

    When Aziraphale does find him the following night, Crawly has two bottles of wine in hand. Invisible to prying eyes, they fly out to a speck of an island, and a stretch of lonely beach.

 

    “Do you remember…” Crawly hands a bottle over. They don’t bother with glasses. “Do you remember Eden?”

 

    “Of course.”

 

    “D’you remember… you said if we met again, you’d have to smite me?”

 

    “Did I say that?” He chuckles. “Dear me, I’ve made a liar of myself, haven’t I?”

 

    “Egg on your face, yeah.”

 

    “Well. I’m glad I have, though. I’m glad I have. You’re… familiar.”

 

    “Are all the angels so charming?” Crawly snorts. “Familiar, he says… I’m good company is what I am.”

 

    “They’re as charming as you remember them.”

 

    His face falls. “Sure, probably.”

 

    “Dear, I-- I’m sorry. You _don’t_ … oh, dear, I am sorry.”

 

    “I remember enough. Don’t miss much. Even at the start I didn’t miss… I didn’t miss the boredom. Whenever I tried to think of it, it was… boring. It’s meant to be a paradise for them when they go, not for us-- you. Not for you. Isn’t that right? So before there were any people up there it was boring, and now there are I expect it’s still boring, at least for the working stiffs. Not that Hell’s better. Earth is, though.”

 

    “Earth… yes, I suppose it’s interesting.”

 

    “It’s loads more interesting!”

 

    “It’s very nice.”

 

    “What’s Heaven got that Earth hasn’t got that’s so great? What’s Heaven got that’s worth missing? Everything I like is here on Earth, thank you very much.”

 

    “I don’t know.” Aziraphale frowns. “The Host. Only…”

 

    “Only some of them are real pricks.”

 

    “Wicked.” Aziraphale says, but he’s not frowning quite so deeply anymore.

 

    “I don’t miss any of the Host kicking around Upstairs.” Crawly asserts.

 

    “Well no, you wouldn’t, would you? Your friends must have also, erm…”

 

    “Fallen? Yeah. Guess so. Like I said, we don’t talk much these days. I’m like you, angel. Everyone else gets their assignments and they go home. I get to stick around.”

 

    “Doesn’t it get lonely?”

 

    “Sure. Rather be lonely on Earth than have company in Hell.” He snorts. “It’s not always lonely on Earth. I mean-- there’s people.”

 

    “Yes. Of course…” Aziraphale chews at his lip. “Of course they… they’re so brief, people. You hardly get to know a person.”

 

    “Right. But you can be around them as a group, it… You don’t have to get to know them to feel less… You know. It’s just nice to be around people.”

 

    “Yes. Of course, it’s nicer--”

 

    “Yes?” Crawly says, too quickly.

 

    “Well, erm-- that is-- You said your… fellow demons, they sometimes come up. Do you get to talk then?”

 

    “Sure. Some of them are all right. And you, er… you talk to the other angels now and then?”

 

    “Oh, yes. Now and then. Not as often as-- as I’d… No. Well. Often enough.”

 

    “I mean, _you_ \--” Crawly says, and stops himself only to realize Aziraphale’s said it at the same time. “Er. Bottoms up, angel.”

 

    It’s the coward’s way out, sure, but it’s the only way he’s got. He clinks his bottle gently against Aziraphale’s and takes a very long swig, wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

    “Crawly…” Aziraphale says, hesitates.

 

    “It’s been good seeing you.” He gets to his feet too quick to stay steady, and nearly falls over backwards in the sand. He sobers himself up forcibly and rather regrets it. “I’ve got some ill deeds of the sort that only happen in the middle of the night. Got to, you know. Got to get back to work. But… have a good trip. See you around!”

 

    “Yes.” Aziraphale waves to him as he goes. “I’ll see you.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    By the time Crawly reaches Egypt again-- the same city Aziraphale is in, he knows now the feeling of being within such easy distance of him-- the emperor Aurelian has already arrived. Has destroyed a vast swath of the place. The city is on fire and the compass needle inside him is going haywire.

 

    He tells himself Aziraphale isn’t so foolish. And then someone tells him what the Broucheion quarter had housed, and he knows Aziraphale is exactly so foolish.

 

    He does what any self-respecting demon would do under the circumstances.

 

    He walks into the flames.

 

    His reasons may be his own, but what’s fire to someone who’s been to Hell? He’s not afraid of being singed.

 

    He has to tap into occult abilities to be able to raise his voice above the roar of the inferno-- that’s the part that feels worse than Hell, to him… in Hell at least you can talk over the inferno, most of the time. Dark powers or no, he shouts himself hoarse.

 

    When he finds Aziraphale, his arms are full of documents and treatises, every single one of which is currently on fire. He drops them to the ground and looks between what looks to Crawly to be a large bonfire in the middle of the street, and the building behind him, groaning in on itself and so much hotter and brighter than the rest of the quarter, so much worse.

 

    Aziraphale’s clothing is on fire, too. His hair is singed. He turns to run back and drops to his knees at the wave of heat that hits him. The _wail_ that comes out of him carries over the deafening sound of the flaming building.

 

    “Angel!” Crawly rushes forward, beating out the flames on his back. Around them, everything is collapsing, the fire rising higher, the smoke too much to see through. The heat a physical force from all sides, Aziraphale as much a wreck as each house or store or school whose timbers crack, whose stone blocks blacken with ash… “Aziraphale!”

 

    He’s insensate with it. Crawly can only get his arms around him and hoist him up, his wings bursting out to take them up above the smoke. He summons all of his strength for it, and he heads north across the sea. He can’t make it the whole way, he has to veer off towards Cyprus. He doesn’t stop until he’s on the verge of collapse, they wind up in a cave along the sea, where he lays Aziraphale out and gets a look at him at last.

 

    “Oh, angel…” He sighs. He’s blistered terribly, his clothing barely exists anymore, there’s so little Crawly can _do_ for him…

 

    He cups his hands, and gathers water, and wills the salt out of it, gently pours it over one painful looking knee. Aziraphale doesn’t even react.

 

    “You’ve got to heal yourself.” Crawly urges. “I can’t do it for you… I can’t-- You’ve got to heal your body. Come on, angel… come on, angel!”

 

    He repeats the process, until he’s dribbled cool water over every reddened, blackened, hideously blistered bit of Aziraphale that he can see. He’s got quite a mound of salt collected nearby by the time he’s done, and Aziraphale still hasn’t reacted at all.

 

    “ _Please_ , angel…” He lies down beside him. There’s nowhere he can touch that doesn’t look painful. “ _Aziraphale_ … mercy, Aziraphale, but you’ve got to take care of yourself.”

 

    “I wish I had burned.” He says at last, his voice a bare croaking whisper, like parchment reduced to ash.

 

    “You have a bit, if that’s any consolation. And then what? You’d only wind up back where you started and they’d give you a new vessel and send you right back to do fuck all about it.”

 

    “It was so terrible… it was so terrible and I don’t want-- I don’t know how-- I’ll never get back what was _lost_.”

 

    “You’ve got to heal yourself. First step’s first.” He urges. He could heal his own self, Crawly thinks, or he could heal any mortal creature, though that’s not exactly among Hell’s priorities, but he doubts he could ever heal an angel, just as Aziraphale couldn’t use Divine magic to heal him. They’re incompatible… he might only make things worse.

 

    “Where are we?”

 

    “Far away.” He strokes Aziraphale’s hair. Which is singed, yes, but at least it can’t feel pain. It smells of burnt feathers, oddly enough.

 

    He’s been told you get used to the smell of burnt feathers. He hasn’t yet.

 

    He’d really rather not.

 

    “Oh.” Aziraphale says. And he doesn’t say anything else.

 

    Some of the blisters begin to look less blistery, at least. He doesn’t bother except for with the worst of them, but Crawly’s glad to see those lessen. He helps Aziraphale to sit, and he returns to the water’s edge, and cups another handful up, and pulls the salt from it once more. Aziraphale’s lips are cracked and split and parted listlessly. He allows Crawly to pour the little bit of water past them.

 

    “We could go farther.” He suggests. “Be good for you, get away from it… we could.”

 

    “... Could we?” Aziraphale’s eyes are listless, dull. “I don’t know that we could. I don’t know that there’s any place so far as to offer me relief now.”

 

    “Don’t talk like that.” A chill goes through him. “Don’t… don’t _despair_. Please-- please, Aziraphale, I couldn’t-- You wouldn’t want-- _Please_.”

 

    “You don’t understand what was lost, Crawly… it feels as if a part of me’s lost. It feels… it feels like the war, when the Host was split.”

 

    “You made it through that.”

 

    “Michael slapped some sense into me, before I could… before I could lose myself to it. I thought I would perish from the grief of it, I don’t know how you-- I don’t know how you all survived being cut loose like that. I don’t know how you live without the fellowship.”

 

    “I’m not slapping you until you heal the rest of those blisters.” He says, as if he could slap him even then. He doesn’t think he could.

 

    Looking at him now, he can’t imagine. But he’s not sure what _to_ do.

 

    “How do you do it?”

 

    “You just do it. Because you haven’t got a choice. But you’ve got a choice. Angel, please… you’ve still got a choice, haven’t you?”

 

    “I shall never be able to rebuild what was lost… I’ve failed my charge. Again. I ought to have been cast to oblivion.”

 

    “Oh, that’s a load of nonsense and you know it. Or you will in the morning. You’ve survived worse and you’re surviving this. Otherwise I’ll have to get a new nemesis and he won’t know any of what I like. Like not being smited, for instance.”

 

    “Smote.” Aziraphale says, though it’s distant and distracted.

 

    “Smitten.” Crawly offers, and aches when Aziraphale doesn’t react at all to it.

 

    He gets another half-swallow of water purified of its salt and poured down Aziraphale’s throat, and when the tide begins to shift inwards and upwards, he gathers the angel into his arms, drawing once more upon the full extent of his demonic strength to fly them out again.

 

    He finds an abandoned barn, its roof half-collapsed. He spreads his cloak over the soft hay with a thought, and with that same thought it is larger spread out than it ever has been before, large enough that he can lay Aziraphale down on it, with no part of him leaving the cloak.

 

    “Wait here.” He touches his hair again. “Oh… angel, trust me and wait here.”

 

    He trusts Aziraphale will, but mostly it’s because he trusts Aziraphale doesn’t intend to move for anything. He doesn’t have the strength to use his powers again, not for a while… he feels strained to the breaking point, now that he’s set Aziraphale down. The weariness hits him at once then. He attempts another flight, to get nearer to town, but he stumbles like a pheasant with an arrow through its wing. He’ll have to walk back, and he doesn’t like how much time it will take.

 

    Between charm and outright theft, he gets the things he needs. Things he hasn’t got the strength left to summon from the firmament. Or wherever he summons them from, anyway. A sharp knife, a sack, a waterskin, food… Will it do any good? Aziraphale likes food, at any rate, but will it help him? A tunic and a small linen sheet taken from a clothesline, another cloak.

 

    By the time he walks all the way back to the barn, exhausted as he’s been since the world was new, Aziraphale looks a little less blistered still.

 

    “Will you eat a little something with me?” He asks. Aziraphale doesn’t answer, but Crawly is undeterred. He takes the little loaf of bread he’d pilfered and tears into it. He pops a strip of chewy crust into his mouth to worry at, holds a chunk of the softer center out. Aziraphale doesn’t take any notice, and so he settles in closer to him and brings it to his lips. “Come on, Angel. You’ll feel better.”

 

    “Shan’t.” Aziraphale says, but he lets Crawly feed him. He doesn’t really chew and swallow, he just lets the bread turn to mush on his tongue over time. Still, eventually it does, and he does swallow then.

 

    “There you go.”

 

    “Crawly… why are you here?”

 

    “Because you would be for me.” He shrugs. He takes the wedge of cheese and cuts a bite from it to offer next. “You’ve got to chew this one, you don’t want me to do it for you.”

 

    “Would I be?”

 

    “Yes.” He cups his healed cheek, and pops the cheese into his mouth. “Be good, now, eat that. We’ll rest here, and… and we’ll keep heading north once you’re fit to travel.”

 

    “I don’t want to sleep.” Aziraphale says, once he’s finished the cheese.

 

    “Why not?” Crawly pauses, the next bite already on its way.

 

    “I don’t want to wake and think for even the barest moment… I don’t want to ask if Alexandria was only a horrible dream, and hear it was all real.”

 

    “Just rest, then, and don’t sleep.” He nods, and feeds Aziraphale the next bite. He lingers without thinking to, the backs of his knuckles brushing gentle across lower lip. “Bread next, or cheese? Or I can cut up an apple for you. And there’s water when you need it…”

 

    “I don’t _need_ \-- but thank you.”

 

    “Consider it repayment for the flood.”

 

    “You repaid me for the flood… ages ago.”

 

    “Then consider it repayment for Indonesia.” Crawly says, and strokes his brow.

 

    “We’ve never met in Indonesia…”

 

    “Hush. And have another bite.”


	8. 'Cause I've Been Scrawling it Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road to Aziraphale's recovery... and the bump in it Crawly would rather not deal with.

    Crawly spends long hours just getting food into them, in the vain hopes that the comfort it offers will do any kind of practical good to either of them. He uses energy he hasn’t got to keep the apple he cuts into slices from browning. He slides his hand through Aziraphale’s hair, cradling the back of his head and holding slice after slice for him to nibble at. Apple, cheese… after a while, Aziraphale chews the bread as well, instead of simply waiting it out.

 

    His skin repairs itself slowly as he eats, and drinks, as Crawly does what little he can. Sometimes, Aziraphale seems to fade away from him, to exist in this place that no one can touch, but it’s a place Crawly thinks he knows. It’s a place he thinks he’s been.

 

    “What happened in Indonesia?” He asks, when he comes back from it, when his eyes meet Crawly’s and he sees him.

 

    “Nothing. We didn’t meet.”

 

    “Yes, I thought.”

 

    “I didn’t do enough to repay you for the flood, anyway. I mean… what I did, it wasn’t personal. You sat with me when I was worse off than you are now.”

 

    “I feel _destroyed_ , Crawly.”

 

    “I know.”

 

    He looks up at him with such a mournful expression. Crawly can’t help feeling for him. He clasps one hand between his own.

 

    “Promise not to laugh if I tell you something?”

 

    “I think so.”

 

    “Er. Right. I just-- When I Fell, you know… when I first found myself-- well, you remember what I looked like, in the garden. It, erm… it’s not funny, really, except for how stupid it is-- I was-- but… at first it was just the pain of it. No Host and… and I couldn’t feel-- But, right, I’m lying there, just trying to ride the agony out, been transformed as punishment and all, and the sun goes down, and… Well, Angel, ever since there was Light, I’d never once not seen any! So here I am thinking… well, whatever’s just happened, that’s it, isn’t it? I thought I’d never see it again in all my days at first, I was so… Just, I suppose I know. Feeling like there’s no hope. But it’s different for you.”

 

    “You must have been frightened.” Aziraphale’s hand squeezes his, weak. “I don’t think it’s funny at all. They explained night and day to me before I went down.”

 

    “It was stupid to be. I can see in the dark. But-- yeah. Suppose. It was a long time ago now… I still remember when you found me.”

 

    Aziraphale hums, and slides away again, into himself.

 

    “Aziraphale? Angel, will you trust I won’t hurt you?” Crawly places a hand to his brow a moment. “Will you trust me? I’m just going to clean you up.”

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t flinch away, either, when Crawly takes a lock of singed hair, thumb and third finger down towards the scalp, the end of it between the first two, stretching just enough taut for his knife to cut through. He trims away the singed bits with care, moving Aziraphale to sit and lean against him as necessary, so that he can get them all.

 

    It leaves it all terribly uneven, but the messy curls hide that little problem. Well, they hide it enough.

 

    He would be lying if he said he didn’t contemplate cutting an unsinged curl for himself. But what would he even do with it? He dismisses the idea as foolish and unfair. He ruffles everything into place as best he can once he’s done, until it all looks close to normal, the little bits he’d trimmed scattered to mingle with the straw.

 

    “Angel?” He whispers, gently grasping Aziraphale’s chin. Their eyes meet, but Aziraphale’s still out of things. “Hey… I’m still-- I won’t hurt you. I’m just taking care of you. All right?”

 

    There’s a flicker of understanding, and then that same resigned blankness. Aziraphale doesn’t flinch as Crawly strips away the burnt tatters of his old clothing. He wets the linen down and begins wiping away ash, gentle. The skin is still redder and shinier in places, but the awful blistering he’s healed himself of.

 

    It’s a nice body, Crawly thinks, though under the circumstances he can hardly think of it as a body, not in the sense of it being an object of desire. Only something to care for. But the lines of him are aesthetically pleasing, and if he were not hurting, if he were not so lost and aching… he is soft, warm.

 

    Smooth. Not that Crawly could call himself surprised, he’d sounded so scandalized once to learn that Crawly kept his genitals all the time rather than manifesting them only under circumstances where someone might see him naked and have questions otherwise. Not that he thinks it would affect his desire, or lack thereof. The air of sadness is too oppressive for _want_ to flourish. But it makes things somewhat less uncomfortable just knowing he can’t accidentally brush anything intimate during his bath. He adds water to more and more of the linen as he goes, and he winds up without half left to dry him off, but he gets his skin mostly clean, and gets him shrugged into the stolen tunic.

 

    Aziraphale does sleep, when he lays him down and covers him with the second cloak at last. He hopes it will do him good, but he doesn’t know. He can’t do enough, that’s his problem. Aziraphale had been able to heal his own blisters, but there are parts of him he cannot heal, and Crawly is useless for that.

 

    A summoning circle is much the same, whether you’re looking to contact Above or Below. The same language is used to make the call.

 

    It’s more draining than he could have imagined to summon chalk to hand after everything else, and he has to stand well back from the circle when he puts the request in proper-- even then, when it opens, the light burns him, he can’t answer coherently when someone asks what in someplace it is he wants.

 

    It fizzles out quickly, and then in a second flash, an angel is there. Crawly is cowering by Aziraphale’s makeshift bed, and he feels a flood of relief when his eyes readjust and he can see it’s Raphael. Michael would have taken his head off and called it a day, and might not even have sorted Aziraphale out, even if he had been the one to have done once before.

 

    Raphael makes a move towards him, and then stops, confusion writ large across his face. One of those perfect angel faces, the kind Aziraphale used to wear, the kind which doesn’t suit all the wonderful things Aziraphale is, the more-than-angelic nature of him. He stares at Crawly, and at Aziraphale, and at the scattering of _things_. Burnt and tattered cloth, the wet, sooty linen, the apple core, the waterskin. The knife which, though close at hand, had never been used as a weapon against a weakened adversary.

 

    “Demon… did you try to call upon Heaven?”

 

    “Er. Yes.”

 

    “It should have been extraordinarily painful for you.”

 

    “It was a bit. Bit bright. I-- You’ll think this is a funny story, I’m sure, but…”

 

    “Aziraphale.” He moves to kneel at Aziraphale’s other side, hand going to his brow. “He’s weak. There’s been a blow to his very essence… but you didn’t strike it.”

 

    “Of _course_ I-- I mean-- Look. Aziraphale… I don’t know if he put this in his reports, but… a while back, he, er… he nearly killed me. Real, not just discorporation, I mean-- And he showed me mercy. He… he saw to it I was all right. You know… said that ought to be enough to teach me a valuable lesson, but he didn’t have to do that. So I owe him this, yeah?”

 

    “Curious. I have never met a noble demon. I have fought others of your kind, since the Fall. None of them have been… oh.”

 

    “What ‘oh’?”

 

    “You’re not much stronger than he is.”

 

    “Yeah, but I’ll be fine with rest. Overdid it a bit, that’s all. Erm… you won’t mind my getting some rest?”

 

    “Let us call this a momentary peace.” Raphael nods. “If he has mentioned you at all in his reports, I would not know. But we were side by side during the battle, much of the time.”

 

    “The thing that’s wrong… can you fix it? He won’t-- He’s not… in danger, is he?”

 

    “No. It’s all right. You care.” It isn’t a question.

 

    “He spared my life before.”

 

    “Mm.”

 

    “What can I do for him?”

 

    “Nothing.”

 

    “But--”

 

    “There is nothing you can do, demon.” Raphael says. The worst part is, he’s not unkind. Just impersonal in a new way. Well… new since the last time they had a passing conversation, Before. He’d always been too certain of everything for Crawly to get along with on any deep level, back in those days, but not a bad sort. Very friendly. From the demons who had fought him, he gathers he’s fair, and he doesn’t aim to smite when a mere discorporation will do. An all right guy, just… no Aziraphale. Which… Crawly supposes if that’s the worst he can say about him, he’s fine.

 

    “Well then what can _you_ do for him?”

 

   “Very little, but he will endure. Tell me, demon… what did you think would happen when you summoned ethereal forces?”

 

   “Thought maybe you’d… dunno. Lop my head off and take him to some heavenly place of healing.”

 

    Raphael cocks his head to one side. His smile is pleasant and mild, but he radiates an air of supreme confusion. “And still you called.”

 

    “Sure. Get discorporated and tell Hell I’d been taken out by an angel but one of theirs had to be recalled to deal with his injuries, that’d go well for me.”

 

    “... Even so. It won’t help him to be discorporated now. The shock’s too much. I don’t mean to say you haven’t done your best as you’re able-- you’ve found him a safe place to recuperate. But food and water mean little to him.” He gestures to everything Crawly had worked so hard to gather. “Unless you have something which is special to him, precious to him, then nothing you give him matters. His vessel needs nothing, it’s his essence which must be fed.”

 

    “Great, so… do that.”

 

    “You’ve been gone a long time, I suppose I can hardly blame you if you don’t understand how difficult that is.” Raphael sighs, pinching his nosebridge. “It would be an unforgivable imposition for me to try to know him while he is unconscious. When he wakes I can ask him if he knows what it is he needs...”

 

    “But if I could bring something precious to him, it would help?”

 

    “Well, yes, but you would have to know him to his core to-- Where are you going?”

 

    “I’m going to find what he needs.”

 

    “I’ve told you, unless you know him--”

 

    “I know him.”

 

    “You mistake my meaning.”

 

    “No. I don’t.”

 

    Raphael stares at him. His expression is unreadable-- not only unreadable, but perfectly, angelically blank-- and more than that, he gives off an aura of blankness, like an overwhelming empty hum.

 

    Crawly sways on his feet once, and takes off back towards town. He spends a whole day searching, and comes away disappointed. He steals a bottle of wine from a home that had not been properly secured against entry, but it’s not…

 

    It isn’t right. It’s just the best he can do.

 

    Raphael greets him with the same blank look upon his return.

 

    “He likes wine. A lot. I know it’s not-- I know it’s not.” He looks away. “But it won’t hurt.”

 

    “The healing will still happen, I ought to have said, but it will take a long time, and I can’t bring down half the Host to help this time. After the war, we all drew together. We were able to heal each other that way. Numbers helped. But it was very different-- what we had to heal from was loss of our number, it made sense, it was easy. I don’t know enough about _this_.”

 

    “They sacked the city he was in. He thinks he failed in his duty, because the library was burned.”

 

    “Failure of Duty. That will be difficult. Not impossible.”

 

    “Angel?” Crawly takes up the spot beside him again, and touches his hair, careful. “Wake up… brought you something.”

 

    “Don’t want it.” He mumbles, leaning into his touch.

 

    “There, there.” Raphael brushes Crawly off, his hand returning to Aziraphale’s brow. “Human history turns, you know, you can’t save them all. Heaven does not find you derelict in your duty.”

 

    He looks up at him, startled, and then looks to Crawly.

 

    “Wine?”

 

    “How--?”

 

    “I’ll get you some wine.”

 

    “He claims you showed him mercy once and he owes you.” Raphael explains, while Crawly deals with uncorking the wine. “I didn’t know a demon could call upon Heaven.”

 

    “Raphael… thank you.” He reaches up to squeeze his fellow angel’s hand. Since the fire, he’s felt nothing but the pain of loss, the sorrow, the threat of despair. He hasn’t felt gratitude towards Crawly for saving his vessel, or trying to help him, though perhaps he ought to have. He feels gratitude now towards Raphael-- not for coming to his aid, but for having let Crawly be, when he perhaps ought to have… to have not. To have run him off at the very least.

 

    “Come on.” Raphael urges him to sit, his voice soft. “Wings out. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

 

    Aziraphale motions for Crawly to keep clear, before he brings his wings out, stretching them and then relaxing. Raphael kneels behind him, grooming the wings folded on his back. Crawly remembers, and does not wish to, that this was… this was something.

 

    He remembers sitting in a circle with Belial and some others. He doesn’t remember who else. But it had been… There was still reserve, removal, distance. Grooming circles, you didn’t sink fully into the essence of those you groomed or those who groomed you, not like when he’d let himself tumble headlong into the heart of who Aziraphale was. Is. And he hadn’t even offered to groom him, they’d only touched by accident and let themselves...

 

    He wants to say ‘let me’ and shove Raphael off, and knows he can’t, and the envy burns. He gives Aziraphale the wine and turns away.

 

    He couldn’t have offered, then… back when it would have been painless and sweet, he couldn’t have, because he had known… he thinks he had known Aziraphale was different, and to touch Aziraphale would have been different, and it would have been impossible to begin touching his wings and _not_. Not chase the taste of him, not keep right on going long past what was proper… If they had ever been in the same circle despite their different spheres, he might have tried to engineer it so that he and Aziraphale would be side by side, except… except if he had ever made something _personal_ within a grooming circle, the others…

 

    He doesn’t want to think about the others.

 

    He picks up the chalk he’d summoned to his hand before, and he goes to the wall, and he focuses. It’s been a couple hundred years, he has to paraphrase, he doesn’t remember it all, but he writes out what he can of the poem that Aziraphale had recited to him, when he had been _company_. He thinks of the rise and fall of his voice, and he thinks of his scrolls, of how he had wanted to transcribe it all to the world in a new language. How it had been important to him to save these things, though the humans of the time had thought the written word a paltry shade beside performance. Aziraphale hoarded his poems and stories and copied and re-copied them. They’re _precious_ to him.

 

    To write it, he must translate it to one of the only written languages he knows-- for all his skill where picking up speech is concerned, he only knows how to read and write in a couple. Still, he has it, he has it… he has it.

 

    “Demon, what are you doing?” Raphael asks, sharp. “What is this?”

 

    “Oh…” Aziraphale rises, moving to stand at his shoulder. “ _Oh_ …”

 

    “Look, it--” Crawly turns to face him, open desperation writ across his face, quartz lenses slid down his nose and golden eyes wide and on display. “I know it’s not perfect. But look, it _is_ , and-- and if I can remember _this_ , then you must remember so much more, and-- and-- and you write it all down over and over again all the time, so-- so you can do that again!”

 

    “There’s too much I don’t have, to be able to… but-- but some, yes. It just… I’ve only read a fraction, and I’m not… my understanding of the scientific is not… there are things I can never recover--”

 

    “And things you can. And that’s still something. No one expects you to do it all, angel… no one expects you to do anything. So everything you can do is just…”

 

    Crawly sways, eyes going unfocused.

 

    ‘Oh’, he says, just as Aziraphale says ‘ah’, and before either of them can say anything helpful, Crawly collapses into his arms.

 

    Luckily for both of them, Raphael is capable of moving very, very fast. The moment Crawly’s full weight hits him, Aziraphale buckles. Raphael carries Aziraphale back to the bed, and it’s only Aziraphale’s grip on Crawly that brings him along as well. Aziraphale’s wings fold away, and he allows himself to be tucked back in between cloaks, his hold on Crawly shifting a bit to bring him along.

 

    “What’s happened to him?” He asks, carefully removing the lenses in their delicate wire frames from Crawly’s face, before smoothing out his hair.

 

    “I wouldn’t know. Though I expect it hurt him to call for me.” Raphael shrugs. Aziraphale pulls the cloak over Crawly rather than himself, and Raphael frowns. “Who is he?”

 

    “He was the serpent at the garden… he’s been here as long as I have.” He studies Crawly’s face. “We… have known each other a long time.”

 

    “Before he Fell?”

 

    “I don’t know who he was Before. We don’t… talk about that. I didn’t socialize very much.”

 

    “He claims to know you very well.”

 

    “I suppose he does.” Aziraphale touches Crawly’s cheek and he doesn’t know if he wants to think about what’s happened since the fire or not. He can’t… Raphael is sitting right _there_ , he and Crawly cannot be _friends_ , and yet… and yet he’d done so much. He’d carried him to safety, he’d fed him, he’d… he must have given him clean clothes at some point. He remembers being fed. He remembers Crawly’s concern and the gentleness in his touch.

 

    Where does it come from, this gentleness? Where does a demon learn to be so tender? What makes him want to be caring like this? They called it even, after the flood. And what could he possibly have meant about Indonesia, where they missed each other?

 

    He’d written poetry on the wall for him, the one he’d recited, that time they… But why would he? Carrying him to safety he can understand. They’re… they know each other and they are not inconsiderate. Wanting him to eat and to rest, certainly. He would do the same. He did do. But the lengths he’s gone to… to call for _Heaven_ , he must have wondered if he would even survive it!

 

    “We aren’t friends.” He says weakly. “I just mean he knows me. Because we’ve been here so long.”

 

    “Lovers?”

 

    “What?” He whips around to stare at Raphael, barely able to comprehend what he’s just heard. “No-- no, why would you think--?”

 

    “He claims to know you very well.”

 

    “He doesn’t mean like that. We’ve certainly never-- I don’t think he should want to. I certainly-- I’ve never… no. I’ve never wanted a lover, I don’t see why I would.”

 

    “Under the circumstances… I won’t say anything about it. You say you aren’t friends. Your having been merciful towards him has paid off in your favor. I don’t suppose I need tell you to be careful… he doesn’t seem to wish to fight you again.”

 

    “Again?”

 

    “You did almost smite him once?”

 

    “Yes, but that was an ac-- Er, I mean… it went further than I meant it to. It wasn’t… It’s complicated.” He wraps his arms around himself to keep from touching Crawly again.

 

    He rests a long while, just watching Crawly sleep, while Raphael sits silently by. When Raphael prompts him, he sits up and carefully unfurls his wings.

 

    The grooming helps. It’s familiar, comforting. It feeds something in him, though it cannot heal the wound Aurelian has left. It cannot heal what the world has lost in Alexandria.

 

    The wine helps, also, and it doesn’t. It leaves him feeling confused. He watches Crawly sleep and he sips at the wine and he has so many questions he doesn’t want answers to. He wants to believe there is goodness yet in Crawly that would have led him to act so, and yet is that not setting himself up for more pain? It’s attractive to think Crawly has acted out of love, and it is dangerous. If Crawly had such feelings, he would have understood that it would be upsetting to leave without a word, that time… The only reason for his sneaking out without a thought to Aziraphale’s own feelings would be if he simply had no understanding of them.

 

    He’d been the one to say they couldn’t be friends, once upon a time… has it really been more than a thousand years? He’d been the one to say it, and it’s not as if he was wrong to, but…

 

    When Crawly wakes, he has straw in his hair. He blinks, and for a moment he stares past Aziraphale’s shoulder at Raphael, a hard, unreadable stare. Then, he finds his glasses, and he leaves the barn without a word. Aziraphale hears wingbeats outside as he takes off.

 

    Well… no reason for him to stay, with Raphael here. He’d come and gone before… but Aziraphale has no idea whether he’ll return this time. He knows he’s meant to be relaxing, meant to allow the grooming to heal him, but he can’t relax. Not now.

 

    They’re enemies, and they have to be enemies with Raphael here, and… and Crawly has never pretended that they could be friends instead, except for that day, except for the single day they had spent not being enemies, before he’d fled in secrecy, and why had he done? Why any of this? Every time he tries to push the questions from his mind, they come back. But the only other thing that he can think of is the fire, and to think of the fire hurts so keenly.

 

    And to think of Crawly?

 

    That hurts, too.

 

    “If we were friends, it would be a betrayal.” He says.

 

    “Hm?”

 

    “Crawly and I. The demon. I-- I feel mercifully towards him because he was once of our number, because it is… it is in me to love all things, even my enemies. I’m certain that’s all right. But… to be friends, it-- that would cross the line, I imagine. It would… dishonor those who died honorably. Or even… those who-- Even if it wasn’t honorable, I mean… even if it wasn’t the glory of the battlefield, but just being taken by surprise in the first moments of uprising… I want you to rest assured that I take our losses very seriously.”

 

    “I know that you do.”

 

    “I still think frequently about-- about our losses, about our losses.” His wings shrug and shake nervously, his feathers ruffling.

 

    “I know. Do calm down, Aziraphale, please… I’m trying to help. No one’s going to care if you’re civil with him now and then. He’s learned not to give you reason not to be, that’s commendable. Really. You are dutiful and Heaven is understanding. You are… strong.” Raphael adds.

 

    “Do you think so? I haven’t felt it.”

 

    “You are. I couldn’t be so far from home so long.”

 

    “It doesn’t matter so much to me, really.” He says dully. “You’ve so many friends up there, I… I would rather be alone down here doing my duty than alone in Heaven.”

 

    “You’re never alone in Heaven.”

 

    “Of course, forgive me. But it has felt that way…”

 

    “We all lost so much.” Raphael says carefully. It doesn’t sound like comfort. From one who seems close to everyone, it’s no comfort. Perhaps it is uncharitable to think Raphael’s feelings shallow simply because they were spread across so many, but to have only one you could call truly beloved and to lose him… it’s not a thing Raphael can know.

 

    Aziraphale’s loss no longer consumes him, though the loss of the library makes it fresh again in his mind.

 

    No.

 

    Crawly makes it fresh in his mind.

 

    Sometimes, Crawly says something, and Aziraphale feels… he _feels_. He looks forward to his company, he enjoys being teased and challenged, and it’s wrong, isn’t it? He knows it’s wrong! And now… to have done all this for him, whatever his reason, how can he not feel anything for him? Wrong or right, how can he not?

 

    Even if it is a betrayal.

 

    At least he can tell himself Crawly didn’t fight, he ran. That’s something. He doesn’t even question anymore why he believes him when it’s exactly the sort of lie a demon might well tell an angel.

 

    He’s further from despair than he had been. Proximity to another member of the Host, one he can actually stand-- he doesn’t want to imagine if it had been Gabriel-- and the grooming, and the softly-sung familiar songs Raphael slips absently into, and perhaps the rest he’d had… The poem upon the wall. His eyes pass over it, as Raphael combs careful fingers through his feathers, and as he sips slowly at the wine. He reads that segment again and again and takes real comfort in it.

 

    He only looks away from it when he hears wings overhead-- Crawly drops through the place where the roof has half-caved in at the other end of the barn, his own wings retracting as he lands. A little hard and graceless, but his sleep had done him good, it seems.

 

    He strides over to where they’re sitting, pointing to Raphael.

 

    “Right. Shove over.” He says.

 

    “Excuse me?”

 

    Aziraphale can feel Raphael bristle behind him, the crackling of energy.

 

    “Shove over.” Crawly repeats. Raphael rises, and he’s very aware of how easy it would be for the angel to grind him down into the dust on the barn floor, but he squares his shoulders and holds his ground. “It’s my turn.”

 

    “Your turn to what?”

 

    “Help.” He says, chin jutting out. “With the grooming. It-- it’s not a proper grooming circle if he doesn’t-- if he doesn’t get yours done. So you shift over to the front. And I’ll take up the back. And no one gets me.”

 

    “You can’t.” Raphael is kind enough not to laugh in his face. Perhaps only just.

 

    “I’ve thought of that, haven’t I?” He holds up the brush he’d liberated from one of the homes in town. It wasn’t really designed for feathers, but he’d run it over his own wing to make sure it wouldn’t hurt or put things out of place.

 

    “That’s not really…” Raphael starts. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable setting a demon at Aziraphale’s back.”

 

    He doesn’t flinch. He could have expected this, and anyway, Raphael’s opinion only means something to him in that it’s more charitable than some.

 

    “I trust him.” Aziraphale says, eyes focused on the brush. “If you’ll be careful, de-- demon.”

 

    He casts him an apologetic look.

 

    “Oh, yeah, you’ve caught me. My brilliant plan to take my nemesis to a safe place, summon another bloody angel to heal him, wait until we’re on pretty equal footing, and then, that’s when I thought I’d strike. Thought I’d go to all that trouble and then trick him into turning his back on me. Instead of just leaving him in the fire. You know, it’s just, I love the challenge. I love the challenge of saving my enemy, nursing him back to health, calling for some backup for him, and then attacking. That’s when I really feel alive, when I’m outnumbered and also _stupid_.” He rolls his eyes at Raphael, only to realize Raphael can’t see him doing it.

 

    “I really don’t think--”

 

    “I trust him.” Aziraphale repeats, a little more firmly. “Come on… let me get yours.”

 

    Raphael moves to sit in front of Aziraphale, but he makes sure to take the knife that’s sitting out with him-- Crawly scoffs audibly when he does so, and he settles in to run the brush over Aziraphale’s wings, careful not to come in direct contact.

 

    The way Aziraphale sighs is gratifying. Crawly tells himself he doesn’t care that it isn’t a proper circle. He doesn’t want anyone at his back.

 

\---/-/---

 

    It still takes days, even with the early leap in Aziraphale’s state. It rains once or twice, and they hide from it under how much roof they have, and Crowley bundles up in the cloak that isn’t there for Aziraphale to lie on. Raphael ministers to Aziraphale, and Crawly writes the things he remembers on the walls, snatches of poems and songs and plays.

 

    The jealousy gnaws at him-- much of the time, Raphael encourages Crawly to not be too present, as he speaks gently and sings old half-remembered songs Crawly doesn’t wish to half-remember anyway. Urges him to get out of the barn when it isn’t raining, so that he can do his work. So that he can say whatever… stupid healing words he might have, and groom Aziraphale’s wings over and over again in peace. Sometimes Aziraphale will retreat into himself for a long listless hour, but it seems to Crawly to happen less and less.

 

    Once a day Raphael lets Crawly join them, so that Aziraphale can have the experience of being groomer as well as groomed.

 

    This time, the impulse is too great to resist, to let his fingers slip from their safe purchase on the brush. To sink into the searing softness of _Aziraphale_.

 

    The burn isn’t so bad as the first time it had happened, and the taste of him’s as sweet and rewarding. He sucks in a breath, and only pulls back at Aziraphale’s soft exclamation. His wings withdraw, the speed of it kicks up a breeze that ruffles Crawly’s hair, but they don’t touch him again.

 

    “I told you to be careful!” Aziraphale turns, still kneeling, and takes Crawly’s hand in his, satisfied by the lack of physical damage.

 

    “It’s all right.”

 

    “It isn’t.”

 

    “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

 

    “No. No, but-- Just… you mustn’t.”

 

    “Because if I hurt you--”

 

    “Of course you didn’t, but I--”

 

    But he _must_ have. Not physically, but he realizes, with a sudden sick feeling in the core of him, that he must have hurt Aziraphale, because if he could taste and smell and feel all things about him, then Aziraphale…

 

    Aziraphale would have smelled the smoke.

 

    “Angel, I’m sorry. I never meant-- Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of-- of that.”

 

    “Remind me of what?”

 

    “Of the fire?”

 

    He laughs and pats Crawly’s hand, before letting him go. “Oh, dear, you don’t. Your smoke smells different, it wasn’t like-- No, it’s quite all right.”

 

    Raphael coughs. “Smoke?”

 

    “Oh-- well, yes. It comes through a bit when he touches my wings, I just smell smoke?”

 

    “Aziraphale…” Raphael speaks very slowly, and looks at Crawly with no small amount of horror. “You should not… smell anything I don’t smell. There was no smoke when he burnt himself on your wing.”

 

    “I expect I just smell it because I’m the one he burnt himself on. It’s not very different from-- Er. I mean, it’s not at all like-- That is…”

 

    “ _You_.” Raphael stands. He hits his full height for the first time since shortly after his arrival, when he’d scaled himself down to fit with them. “ _Out_.”

 

    It seems prudent to obey.

 

    Aziraphale finds him two days later, huddled in a tree. He pins one of the two cloaks around him and takes his hand.

 

    “I explained everything as best I could.” Aziraphale promises. “He feels as if you… erm, as if you’ve imposed upon me, but it wasn’t your fault, it only happens. Anyhow, he’s gone back up. And… we might-- we might move on. I hardly know where. I feel rather unmoored still, but… moving on will do me good, I know.”

 

    “We may as well travel together. As long as Upstairs doesn’t find out.”

 

    Aziraphale nods. “Where to?”

 

    “North. As far as civilization stretches. A real change.” Crawly smiles.

 

    He regrets it, of course. North, as it turns out, is cold. And the Roman Empire stretches all the way up to a bloody little island where the mist is thick on the ground any time it isn’t raining. Chill and damp, his two least favorite conditions.

 

    “Oh!” Aziraphale exclaims. “Yes!”

 

    “Yes?”

 

    “Yes! I should like to stay here. Forever!”

 

    “Oh, angel, tell me you’re joking...”


	9. There's Something Lonesome About You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They *should* avoid each other. And sometimes, for a time, they do.
> 
> Sometimes they don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yooo my apologies to everyone who read this before I put the scene break in towards the end! Fixed!

    Crawly waits until Aziraphale seems settled and well, before he leaves the miserable spit of an island the angel seems so enamored of.

 

    He rambles around a bit, he flies farther than he ever has, across the ocean until he’s afraid there’s not really anything to reach, until he reaches it. And it’s fine, but…

 

    Every place gets boring eventually, when Aziraphale isn’t there.

 

    He doesn’t go looking for him. He’d tempted fate with Raphael, with traveling together so close after. He thinks about seeking Aziraphale out, he thinks about lying in a bed in a modest little house somewhere and pestering him, and sharing food and wine, and then he thinks about that thunderous ‘ _Out_ ’, the horror and the fury in that smooth, blank face.

 

    He doesn’t understand what had brought the sudden change on. That he had touched Aziraphale’s wings bare-handed, perhaps, that it’s some offense no one explained to him for him to have done so, even though he had been the one hurt by it. That Aziraphale ought never to have been subjected to his demonic essence, which… is fair, but Aziraphale had said he wasn’t upset by it. There must be all sorts of rules and regulations and standards he doesn’t know about Upstairs nowadays, though, and even Aziraphale probably isn’t much in the loop. Much as he’d like the sort of interesting that the world only ever seems to truly get when the angel is in the vicinity, the feeling of scrutiny follows him across continents. Some things in life may be unavoidable, but he’d rather a smiting not be among them, and he’s got no idea what Raphael may have had to say about him.

 

    He’s content enough to spend some time in Tiwanaku. He doesn’t expect he’ll see Aziraphale there, and while that’s safe and perhaps for the best… Well. But he won’t see him, because they’ve not got a written language, and the climate is far too pleasant and warm and lovely for Aziraphale’s tastes, given how he’d liked the north! But the architecture and the delicate artistry that covers it all is beautiful, and the food is pleasing when he wishes to have a taste of something. Aside from the odd little temptation here and there, he takes it as a vacation and he watches the way the political power structure unfolds, watches the city absorb its neighbors through cunning rather than might. He discovers he really likes a starchy root vegetable they have there, even if he only really likes a little bit at a time. He discovers little birds which remind him of the doves he knows, in different colors, and other, newer, stranger birds which make him homesick, flashing wings as bright as those of angels. Not homesick for Before, he doesn’t think, but homesick for Aziraphale. His wings were ruffled even when they’d been assiduously groomed several times a day, and always gave the impression of being dusty when they were not… but beautiful, beautiful.

 

    In the end, it’s not Heaven’s politics which unsettle him into flight once more, but Hell’s. Belial hasn’t spoken to him in a thousand years or so, but he’s got enough sense of old loyalties in him to get in touch over the current upheavals. Some power struggle between dukes and marquis and lords and such, which he’d have thought himself well out of, being as he lives on earth and has no title. But he’d got that one early distinction, hadn’t he? Nevermind that he hadn’t done much the past couple centuries to earn a commendation for. That’s just his luck. His name had come up with someone, and he ought to keep on his toes until it all blows over.

 

    It always does, Belial tells him, but that’s not much consolation when he also tells him they know where he’s set himself up cozy.

 

    About time, anyway. The birds were beginning to get to him a bit too much.

 

    He’s not thinking about Aziraphale when he flees across the globe. He’s not thinking of how to find or avoid him, when he returns to Europe. He’s only thinking about how long he might need to outrun a bunch of power-hungry demons-- long enough for them to destroy each other instead, or long enough for Lucifer to smack them all down and reinstate business as usual-- and it makes for frantic traveling.

 

    He bounces around from place to place without stopping to really rest, until he can’t take it any longer. He may have strength and stamina beyond human imagining, but it gets to one after a while…

 

    He’s touched down, wings needing a break-- all of him needing a break from the stresses of flight, really, and he’d carried on on foot over fields, alongside a creek. Up ahead there’s some manner of castle or fortified town, he won’t know what until he reaches it. A small one, as he draws closer-- maybe not a fortified town, but a fort.

 

    Up ahead of him there’s another lone traveler, a human who dismounts their ass outside the walls, to kneel at a fountain there. It’s certainly appealing-- traveling is always a thirsty occupation, but flight in particular had a way of drying you out. He angles himself towards the fountain rather than the gates, as the other traveler moves on their own way.

 

    He’s so close as to be nearly within reach when he’s tackled to the ground, the impact rattling him. He pushes back, striking out blindly against his unseen attacker, not quite making contact in his attempt at landing anything, a bite, a blow.

 

    He doesn’t register the voice shouting his name, the _aura_ , until his teeth are latched onto a soft forearm, and he releases him immediately, and is released.

 

    “What the-- what in the name of-- of something was that?” He sputters, grabbing for Aziraphale and checking to see he hadn’t hurt him, rolling back a rough woolen sleeve just to prove to himself the skin remains unbroken. If he’d had the time and presence of mind to grow fangs, the damage he might have… “Do we fight each other now? Is that what _they_ told you to do, Upstairs?”

 

    Aziraphale looks pale, there’s real fear in his eyes as he grabs at Crawly’s arms again as well. They pull each other up to their feet, and Aziraphale keeps hold of him, using more strength than his vessel alone can allow for.

 

    “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” He demands, frightened and furious.

 

    “No, I’m trying very hard to avoid it!”

 

    “You don’t know where you are…” He sighs. “Of course. You don’t know where you are. I mean it’s only a monastery, that fountain outside the walls is _blessed_.”

 

    Crawly’s legs nearly go out from under him. He’d have realized if he made for the gates, once he was too near to consecrated ground, but if the fountain wasn’t on consecrated ground, he could have…

 

    He could have…

 

    “Thanks.” He says weakly.

 

    “I thought I sensed your approach. I’m glad I-- Well. I just… Erm. Been a while. You look well.”

 

    “I don’t, and neither do you, but I suspect we shall recover in a moment.” He tries to smile. It doesn’t feel quite right on his face. He supposes at least he never would have been able to drink it, a drop on his hand would be enough to take him out. He’d never have gotten the chance to have had it on his tongue, down his throat, but he’d have had enough time to realize what was happening to him, how terrible… he’d have had enough time to really feel the agony of it.

 

    It’s the worst way for a demon to die, and one of the _surest_. With a proper good smiting, from the right enemy, it’s over in a flash. You might not even feel it. Holy water… it’ll kill you, and it won’t take much, but you’re aware of it. You’re aware of it too bloody long, that’s what he’s heard.

 

    “Why don’t you come with me?” Aziraphale prompts, giving his elbow a gentle tug. “There’s a little cottage outside the monastery proper, it should be safe for you there.”

 

    “Thank you, angel.”

 

    “Nonsense. I’m fairly certain I do owe you from before...”

 

    It’s an idyllic little spot… the meadow here is overgrown with wildflowers, purple and gold, and beneath a sprawling shade tree there are beehives set up, some ways from the cottage itself. The sound of the creek carries around the corner of the monastery to reach them here, and the birds… It’s not quite the dream, perhaps, no cliffs over the sea with breezes that catch your wings, but it’s certainly the sort of place you could be happy for a while. The sort of place Aziraphale could be happy for a while.

 

    It’s the scent that hits him, the moment he’s through the door. It smells like _Aziraphale_. There are books piled up on a workbench, in varying states of repair. He has seen books before, but they’ve only ever been new. These are old, he’s never been around old books before… they’ve only just had the chance to get to be so old, perhaps, and he’s spend a lot of his time, the past couple hundred years, in places where books were not, but…

 

    But _oh_ , this is it, this is the scent at the heart of him that he’s searched for and needed. He finds himself on his knees beside the workbench, clinging to its edge and tasting the air.

 

    “Steady on, are you all right, dear boy?” Aziraphale hauls him up by the armpits, depositing him onto a bed that mustn’t see much use. “Faint from the shock of before, I wouldn’t wonder, you just hit the floor!”

 

    “Your books…”

 

    “You didn’t upset anything, they’re fine. Not _mine_ , regrettably. Oh, how I wish they were! I’m repairing them for the monastery, while brother Thomas is too ill to work. The only bookbinder they have. And their old works are all in such need of care… I wish I could take the time to make my own copies of some, but even with my ability to work through the night, I really can’t. Besides, what I’d do with them once I had...” Aziraphale says breezily, bustling about the place.

 

    He puts a wooden cup into Crawly’s hand, a very restorative fortified wine. For a while, they simply sit in silence. Or, lounge, in Crawly’s case.

 

    “So you’re repairing them for the monks… that’s the state of angelic duty these days, and you really can’t take the time to make a copy for yourself?”

 

    “I am making myself useful where I find myself. All part of the plan, I trust. But it’s… oh, what would I do with my own books? Where would I put them?” He laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh. The sort of laugh that speaks to hidden longing.

 

    “You should have _one_.” Crawly presses. He thinks of how he had been, after Alexandria. He thinks of what Raphael had said, about knowing him, and what’s precious to him. “You could carry just one with you when you travel.”

 

    “I suppose. I… I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t have a-- Oh, no, it’s… it’s too foolish.”

 

    “Try me.”

 

    “A home.” Aziraphale whispers. “I know I couldn’t just stay there, it’s not the nature of the thing, but… I could go back to it. A home, like-- like people have. Oh, what would I even do with one?”

 

    “Go back to it.” Crawly smiles. “Keep books there.”

 

    “I couldn’t afford to.”

 

    “Why couldn’t you? You have money sometimes. You could make yourself a home and it’s not as if you need to spend money on clothes and food--”

 

    “I spend money on clothes. I suppose I could cut down on my wine purchasing, but I mean, I do buy things. It’s part of living in a society, Crawly, I buy things from people.”

 

    “You could, though. If it would please you. Anyway you ought to do! If you’re going around buying clothes instead of making them when you want them, you ought to have a place to keep them, and you… you should have books.”

 

    “But I’m just me! What an extravagance, to have books when I’m just me…”

 

    “You never thought it was an extravagance to have tablets. Scrolls.”

 

    “I wasn’t making them for myself…” Aziraphale says, though he isn’t at all sure. He’d done it to preserve them for posterity! But he had enjoyed having them… he had enjoyed having them. “Besides, a tablet’s not at all an extravagance on the level of a _book_. You… you’re trying to tempt me into material want.”

 

    “Angel, I don’t need to tempt you.” Crawly chuckles.

 

    There is too much pleasure in being teased so. He ought to be angry-- well, not angry, because he doesn’t truly mean it to be cruel or nasty, but he ought to be put out with him for joking about such things. He ought to tell him in no uncertain terms…

 

    “You’re terribly wicked to say.” He says instead, and absolutely nothing in his tone suggests that Crawly might stop being so wicked any time soon. The little rush that sweeps through him at the way Crawly grins, lounging there on his bed and drinking his wine, and looking quite recovered from the fright of learning he’d nearly smited himself.

 

    Smote himself.

 

    No. He shall stop that line of thought right there. That’s no way to… no.

 

    “I don’t think a home is such a strange thing to want.” Crawly adds, serious. “I like seeing new things, but… a home sounds nice. I haven’t had a home in a long time…”

 

    “Just a place to go _back_ to. Just a place to call mine… I know I would be away from it sometimes, but… to go back to a home. I haven’t been back home in so long… I mean, I have one. I have one, Upstairs, but they… they won’t recall me. I mean, as long as I’m needed on Earth! Not that they never would, just… And not that I’m not… I like being needed on Earth. But perhaps if I had a home here, it… Perhaps I would like to keep a little house like this, somewhere.”

 

    It’s a complicated feeling and he does not like complicated feelings. Angels aren’t supposed to have them. But he wants… he wants to be recalled, and he doesn’t. He does prefer his life on Earth, wandering through helping people, doing his duty, seeing everything happen. Home is a place where nothing ever happens… and he’s gotten used to things happening. He doesn’t want to lose the things he has here, the sense of usefulness when he goes about his duties, the beauty of nature, and oh, _books_. Books and songs and theatre! He doesn’t want to be told that he must return to Heaven and that someone else will take his place, that would make him very unhappy, he thinks, though he would feel guilty for being unhappy.

 

    He only wants someone to say ‘we miss you, Aziraphale’. He only wants for… for there to be one angel who thinks his presence would improve things. But they all have each other, and it’s silly to think that they might miss just one angel at an earthly outpost. No one is lonely for only one member of the Host…

 

    Nobody except Aziraphale. And he shall be lonely a very long time, if that’s what he wants.

 

    For forever.

 

    “If I was going to keep a home, I’d want it to be very grand.” Crawly says, making Aziraphale roll his eyes.

 

    “Mm, yes, I’m sure you would. Some great house on a hill.”

 

    “I’d want arches in it.” He nods. “And an orchard inside the walls, a little one. And white stone walls that gleam like fire in the setting sun.”

 

    “Ostentation! What would you even do with such a big place?”

 

    “I don’t know. I’d sleep there. I’d have an enormous bed and an enormous fireplace, and a pile of furs as tall as I am to sleep under when it’s cold. Maybe I’ll have some things just because they’re beautiful and I like them.” He shrugs, fiddling with the penannular brooch of his cloak-- no more a simple pin, this one is the graceful, curving figure of a snake, with a long sleek head. Little chips of citrine for eyes.

 

    “Did you make it?” Aziraphale asks.

 

    “Hm? Oh, this, yes. Well… I made it out of an old one. Magicked it up to be a bit nicer. I like a pretty thing to look at. I like art. But there’s… there’s no point owning any, is there?”

 

    “No, I don’t think so.”

 

    “I _mean_ , I couldn’t carry a great marble statue on my back every time I had to move. No matter how much I liked it. And I love big marble statues. I owned some once, too, when I had a house in Pompeii, and…”

 

    “Yes, I remember Pompeii.” Aziraphale frowns.

 

    “I just had to leave it all behind. I mean… always knew I would just have to leave it behind, only… it’s always that way. I don’t hardly bother with having a house, most places. I’d just want to fill it with things I can’t keep.”

 

    He’d had a garden in Pompeii. And then he had had to leave it.

 

    He hasn’t bothered with a house of his own since.

 

    Maybe Aziraphale has the right idea. A home to come back to after traveling far and wide, instead of a little place to hang one’s hat for a month at a time or so before abandoning it all. He would have to hire gardeners on when he was going to be on a long journey, but… a home, he could have a home and a garden again. Maybe…

 

    Only when he knew things were stable in Hell… only if he could think no one would ever bother coming after him based on some mad idea about what he was worth in some stygian power struggle. But someday, perhaps, a proper home.

 

    Maybe he could just come ‘round Aziraphale’s, the pattern is already established. He wouldn’t have to move himself in and stay there being underfoot, but if Aziraphale had a bit of empty land he wasn’t using, and no desire to expand beyond a tiny little place… he might not mind Crawly putting in a garden and sleeping outside when the weather’s mild now and then…

 

    It’s a mad thought, he knows it is. It blurs the lines far more than they should ever let themselves… It’s one thing when it just happens, when it’s an accident, an emergency, an offer made in a moment of surprise and loneliness, a single night… He could never… It could never be a real standing invitation.

 

    If they were not enemies, it would make sense to share a place, and to agree that only one of them would ever be there at a time. If he was meant to split the work on Earth with another demon, it would be perfectly sensible to say ‘look, let’s have a house someplace, and while I travel and work my wicked wiles in the world, you’ll look out for the garden and keep the roof from coming in and just do local temptations, and while you travel and work your wicked wiles in the world, I’ll tend my garden and keep the roof from coming in, and just do local temptations’, and it would be really very simple. If Aziraphale were sharing his duty with another angel, he’d undoubtedly already have a house with the lucky bugger, and they’d take turns spreading goodness and light or sitting home with a glass of wine and a… and a _book_. Or making music, or gardening, or what have you.

 

    Being on different sides, they can’t do.

 

    That he even gets this, that’s more than he could ask for.

 

    Aziraphale refills his cup, and then gets to work on one of the books, and Crawly breathes in the scent of it, his eyes falling shut.

 

    He sets his cup aside once he’s finished, and he simply… _basks_.

 

    He looks so at peace, really. He isn’t asleep, Aziraphale doesn’t think-- he’s seen Crawly sleep a few times now, a few times… this is just relaxation. It’s good to see, after he’d had to tackle him to the ground to keep him getting near enough to that fountain to…

 

    Mercy, but one drop and there’d have been no saving him. One drop and Aziraphale would be alone in the world, he really would be.

 

    The other angels cannot know what he has done this day… but he has been on Earth longer than he thinks he was ever in Heaven now. He has known Crawly longer than he ever had--

 

    Longer than he thinks he has ever known anyone, in terms of hours of close association. True, he is always connected to the Host, but when does he ever get two words from them? Before Raphael had come down, it had been ages since he’d seen another of their number, it had been when Uriel and some lesser angel had been sent to work with him… but Crawly pops up sometimes and they… they _talk_. So help him, they even seem to like some of the same things.

 

    To call him a friend is still a gross betrayal. A betrayal he has committed, in his heart of hearts, in secret. In _shame_.

 

    But someone he has known a very long time, whose loss… whose loss in such a horrifying manner, oh-- oh, if he’d had to _witness_ it! He’s seen it once before, in times antediluvian, he’d seen holy water wielded as a weapon and seen the hideous way it had… Of course that particular demon had been a truly nasty number, nothing like his-- nothing like Crawly at all, but…

 

    It had shocked him. It had frightened him-- sickened him, and mostly it did so because his mind had turned to Crawly, but he had asked… he had asked his fellow angels at the time if they ever thought about who the demons they fought used to be Before. That thought, they had told him, would not be very helpful.

 

    So.

 

    His work occupies him, keeps him from simply sitting there staring at Crawly, until there’s a knock on the door which is more to announce that it is about to be opened than it is to request admittance.

 

    “Oh-- you have company.” The abbot says.

 

    “Erm… yes.” Aziraphale tells himself not to panic. They wouldn’t ask him to face more than he can handle, after all, and everything that could happen is accounted for somewhere, in the great Ineffable plan of things. He just… has to get through it without anyone at the monastery finding out that Crawly is a demon.

 

    “Brother Anthony.” Crawly rises, offering his hand to Abbot Humbert, and Aziraphale could _strangle_ him. “I once served with my friend’s order, before he came here.”

 

    “And you have followed him here?”

 

    “Evidently.” Aziraphale says under his breath.

 

    “It took me some time to get things in order before I could follow, but I’ve vowed to assist him in all things and help with his work. And… because of my _misfortune_ , well…”

 

    “Misfortune?”

 

    “I have been cursed by the devil himself.” Crawly says. He sounds terribly pleased with himself. Aziraphale wonders how he would explain it to the abbot if he did suddenly murder his supposed friend right there in the middle of the little cottage. “And because of that terrible curse, I cannot enjoy the fellowship of my brothers, nor attend services, nor even set foot on hallowed ground. Indeed, my life might have been over, had it not been for my dear companion-- at our old place, when it became impossible for me to set foot inside where I once lived, I was forced to sleep out in the garden, but he set up a house before the weather turned, where I could live, and from there I could be a companion and helper. It is only his incorruptibility which saves us. When he was called here, I was hardly certain of what would become of me, but I had to follow. He has very nearly succeeded in burning the devil out of me. Someday perhaps he shall.”

 

    “You poor man.” The abbot pats Crawly’s hand, eating up every word of his wicked lies. The very thought! Impersonating a monk! At least he has a clever little cover story for why he won’t be participating in monastery life, but that only makes it worse, doesn’t it?

 

    “Yes, there’s a certain devil I’d give a thrashing to with my own two hands, given the chance.” Aziraphale says, with a pointed glare. “A demon has no place bothering honest men of faith, and ought to be punished accordingly. Anyway, as you are here to help, and if the abbot agrees, perhaps you can be put to work tending the beehives.”

 

    “That pleases me.” Crawly nods, smiles with all the open innocence one might expect out of a young monk desirous only of continuing to be useful despite his unfortunate circumstance.

 

    “Oh, yes, very well, then. That does help with things.” Abbot Humbert nods. “If your work is coming along well, and if you need nothing else tonight, I… I can’t think of what else I might have needed. I ought to leave you to your happy reunion…”

 

    “My work is coming along very well, thank you. I do appreciate your dropping in, but we want for nothing. Our vows do demand we live simply, and I have all that the two of us need right here. Go in peace, Abbot.”

 

    He shuts the door behind the man and rounds on Crawly.

 

    “What are you playing at? _Brother Anthony_?”

 

    “What’s wrong with it? Look, I’m going to do the work, so I don’t see how it hurts anyone--”

 

    “ _My_ name here is Brother Anthony!”

 

    Crawly laughs. The beast.

 

    “Oh! Oh, that’s rich! He thinks we’ve got the same name? Well, that’s not so bad. Really it isn’t. Look, you can’t be mad at me for using ‘Anthony’, I’ve used ‘Anthony’ with the humans since Rome! You’re always using different names and you usually don’t try very hard.”

 

    “That’s not-- I mean, I am certainly put out that you’ve showed up and used my name, but it’s the ‘brother’ part that I take exception to! You’re a _demon_ , you can’t impersonate a monk! Why do you even want to work at a monastery? You can’t go inside, and I certainly don’t intend to allow you to tempt these good men! I shall do all in my power to keep you from them!”

 

    “You’re impersonating a monk! I want to work at a monastery, because no one will ever look for me here.” Crawly explains, as if Aziraphale is being particularly dense. “I realized, lying here… this is as safe as it gets. Just until Hell quiets down.”

 

    “I never impersonated a monk, I only said I was a servant of the Lord, which is the truth! And how long does it normally take for Hell to quiet down? I’ll be moving on eventually! You won’t be able to stay here without me, it’s-- it’s dangerous! What’s even going on in Hell that you would have to come here?”

 

    “Not if I stay outside the real monastery. But they still won’t look for me here. And if they did… well, I probably shouldn’t be hiding behind you if they do, but they’re not going to. Every once in a while some duke or other gets it in his head to cause trouble, it’s not a big deal. Except this time my name’s come up with someone, so now I’ve got to lay low. Lie low?”

 

    “Do you even know how to tend bees?”

 

    “Of course I do.” Crawly lies. “People have been keeping bees since shortly after they were out of the gates, people have been keeping bees since the world was new.”

 

    “I’ll show you how it’s done, then.” Aziraphale sighs. “First thing that has to be done is to smoke them to sleep.”

 

    “Leave the smoke to me, smoke I can do you.”

 

    In the end, Aziraphale has to admit… Crawly is good with the bees. He makes the cottage seem less lonely,  as well. In the day, Aziraphale works with the monastery’s books, and Crawly tends the bees and passes time with the cowherd who moves his few cattle through their meadow, and amuses himself and naps… In the evening, they normally chat about this and that, over a little wine. Then Crawly sleeps in the bed while Aziraphale continues his work. Sometimes Aziraphale reads out loud to him-- on the days that he brings a modest lunch out to the meadow where Crawly is ostensibly tending to one thing or another, he has a book with him as well, and Crawly stretches himself out on a spread cloak to listen. It is not Aziraphale’s job to edit the biblical texts themselves, but once or twice, Crawly privately thinks it ought to be, as they sometimes remember things a bit differently.

 

    “How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?” Aziraphale reads, a fraction of his attention straying to the demon lying amongst the wildflowers. They droop in the quiet breeze and the midday sun and tickle his cheek, and he bats them away every now and then. He nibbles at the day’s bread and fruit without sitting up, he’s already devoured the hard-boiled egg. And his attention, in return, rests lightly on Aziraphale as he reads. “How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;”

 

    “Lest mine enemy say ‘I have prevailed againssst him’.” Crawly rolls himself up to a seated position. “Yes, yes, I do believe I know this one.”

 

    He reaches out to pop a grape into Aziraphale’s mouth before he can protest, smiling. Reveling in the disapproving look, no doubt. Although… it is really only disapproving in a business-as-usual sort of a way. It’s rather spoiled by the pleased smile once the grape bursts on his tongue, its juice sweet, its flesh yielding.

 

    “What was that for?” He asks, very delicately spitting the seeds down into the grass, in amongst the roots of the tree.

 

    “For you.” Crawly shrugs. “You put together these lunches I don’t really need to eat, but you… you like it more than I do. Eating.”

 

    “It’s not about liking things. I don’t need things just because I like them, I don’t-- I oughtn’t like-- There are a lot of things I’m not meant to like. And I shouldn’t have them.” He says, flustered. “It’s-- it’s for them, that’s all. I mean… so that if they looked at us, they’d see you eating while you work.”

 

    “So they’d see you feed me. So you can look virtuous.”

 

    “So I don’t look cruel, at least! And what’s wrong with that? I can’t help these people if they don’t trust me, and I wouldn’t be a trustworthy person if I had a younger monk under my wing and I sent him out to work in the field all day and never thought to feed him. You didn’t have to claim you’d taken a vow to assist me in all things! Which, by the way, what will your superiors think?”

 

    “I’m spending my time driving an angel to distraction. And tempting monks.”

 

    “But you aren’t tempting them.”

 

    “They’re tough nuts to crack.” Crawly shrugs. “That’s what I’ll say, if I’m asked, work won’t know any better.”

 

    “I’ll be leaving them soon. I’m nearly done with my work, and… Well. When I do… you shall have a little time in the cottage, if you want to say you are cleaning up after us and joining me down the road. If you need it.”

 

    “Seems it hasn’t been much time at all, has it?”

 

    “It doesn’t take that much time. And I’m needed other places. Tonight I inform the abbot I shall go at the end of the week, but I can tell him you will be staying behind longer, if you need me to.”

 

    “No. When you go, I’ll go. Things should have cooled off. Er, so to speak.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    He cuts up the honeycomb on their last day, and brings a piece to Aziraphale when he comes outside-- sans book-- to meet him.

 

    “I just thought-- I mean-- since it’s the last time.” He holds up the basket.

 

    “Since it’s the last time.” Crawly holds up the dripping chunk of honeycomb, other hand cupped beneath it. “If you’ve got bread, get it out now, I’m a mess.”

 

    They sit, and Aziraphale does bring the bread out, to drizzle honey over. Crawly had been going to say he ought to eat it himself as he’d like it more, but the moment Aziraphale holds it out to him, his resolve is dust.

 

    “Since your hands are…” He laughs weakly. “Like old times a bit, isn’t it?”

 

    “Old times.” Crawly agrees, leaning in to take a bite.

 

    He has never found bread particularly satisfying, nor craved the sweetness of honey overmuch. From Aziraphale’s hand, he would dine until full to bursting if he could. The feel of it, thick stickiness melting on his tongue, turning the surface of the bread crystal with itself, and melting again…

 

    “You have some.” He says, having devoured three bites without a thought. His voice husky.

 

    Aziraphale does. If this is temptation, so be it, he is tempted. But the look on Crawly’s face is a testament to the delight of having eaten the stuff. He watches Crawly lick the honey from one hand, watches the way his tongue travels around his fingers, obscene. A demon’s tongue. A serpent’s tongue. A hypnotic thing to watch, and to see the pleasure on his face, which is not demonic. No, it…

 

    It is as sweet and as innocent as anyone’s pleasure might be, in as harmless an indulgence as a bit of honey.

 

    The knife comes from nowhere, and vanishes from nowhere once no longer needed, when Crawly cuts a bite-sized piece from his small chunk of comb. He offers it to Aziraphale.

 

    It is the same golden color as his eyes.

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t know why that should be the thought which strikes him, but for a moment it is all that he can think, and he has opened his lips to it before he is done having the thought, and the honey is even sweeter like this, and Crawly’s thumb is gilded with it when it slides against Aziraphale’s lip.

 

    The wax softens in his mouth, the honey seeps from it to be swallowed greedily down.

 

    It’s just as well he can think of nothing to say, with his mouth full, but oughtn’t he to say _something_? Crawly says nothing, just licks the honey once more from his fingers, with that serpentine tongue.

 

    Aziraphale reaches out, and summons back the knife-- or, one remarkably like it-- to cut another bite sized piece from the hunk in Crawly’s hand. To bring that to his lips in exchange. To banish the knife from existence, once not needed, and to focus upon the way that the demon’s tongue wraps around the wax, and pulls it back into his mouth before it can drip too much down Aziraphale’s hand.

 

    He wants it to.

 

    Which doesn’t make sense, because that would be a mess, more of a mess, and he doesn’t _like_ mess. And the honey is very sweet and very pleasant, but it’s not what he likes, it’s not _substance_. It’s really more Crawly’s thing, isn’t it? Just to have something sweet to taste a while and not to feel full from it. But all of a sudden he thinks he sees the appeal, or he sees the appeal to this.

 

    He has one clean hand. With it, he reaches out to gently lift the lenses from Crawly’s eyes, to find a honeyed gaze.

 

    He has known him as long as he has known anyone… he has known him longer, longer… and here, in this place, with weeks of this simple daily life, he had begun to let himself forget.

 

    He lets the lenses settle back into place, feeling hot and unsettled. He had begun to let himself forget it has all been an act. Crawly is hiding from Hell here. They are not… not really… They have known each other a long time and they have fallen into a pattern of favors traded here and there, but they cannot be the sort of friends they have posed as here. The Brothers Anthony are a pretty fiction.

 

    He miracles the saliva and honey from his hand. The idea of licking it from his skin makes his stomach feel small.

 

    “I have to put the cottage in order.” He whispers, rising. “The bed’s still yours tonight, but I-- I’ll be gone.”

 

    “Aziraphale--”

 

    “Thank you. And… Until next time.”

 

    “Until next time.” Crawly nods, and watches him go from behind the quartz lenses.

 

    Aziraphale puts everything as it should be, and then he takes off. Lundenwic, they’re unlikely to meet there. Crawly had hated it when the area was Roman, it had been too cold for him. And Aziraphale just needs some _time_ , some time not to think of him, not to be tested by him, tempted by him. Not to find himself thinking of a demon as a friend. He doesn’t want to have these feelings anymore.


	10. Hands Reaching 'Cross a Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An important step is taken, in the relationship between a demon and an angel... and the relationship between a demon and himself.

    They meet once in Bulgaria, two hundred years after the cottage by the monastery wall. Another seventy years before they see each other in Denmark. Things are cordial, not frosty.

 

    Not warm.

 

    In Bulgaria, they are both keen for things to be business as usual. In Denmark, Crawly invites Aziraphale to join him for a meal, and Aziraphale turns red, and refuses.

 

    Thirty years or so hence, Crawly finds himself back on that little island. No longer Roman, it’s England now, they’ve been a kingdom for a bit. When he and Aziraphale run into each other, this time, Aziraphale quietly suggests getting a drink. There’s something soft and half-embarrassed in it, and they find themselves on a riverbank just outside of a city, passing a bottle back and forth.

 

    “I am sorry, not to have dined with you before. It seemed prudent, at the time. It’s… It is _imprudent_ , to break from business as usual too often. Which is getting to be a habit. I don’t-- I don’t want you to be in trouble. I don’t want to be in trouble myself, but I’m meant to not want to get into trouble, I’m not meant to want to keep you out of it! I’m meant to get you into it!” Aziraphale says, halfway into the bottle. He gestures broadly with it, beginning to work himself up, and Crawly reaches over, taking it from him.

 

    “I don’t want either of us in trouble. But things aren’t like they were in the old days much, are they? I mean… there’s no reason we can’t be civil if we’re both still doing our jobs. No reason we can’t have a drink as long as I’m out there tempting and you’re out there thwarting.”

 

    He takes a swig of his own, tongue sliding into the bottle as he rights it once more, lapping at the retreating rolling droplets that cling to the curve of the glass.

 

    Aziraphale looks away and tries not to think about whether sanitation is a concern between the two of them. He doesn’t think it can be, but he still feels rather uncomfortable watching that too-long and narrow tongue slip in and out of the neck of the bottle.

 

    “Did you ever get a house?” Crawly changes the subject, as he passes the bottle back.

 

    “Hm? No, no-- too busy moving all over. Seems I’m barely in one place long enough to bother. I don’t know why Heaven doesn’t send down more angels to cover ground, if I’m meant to be this active… You?”

 

    “No. No. I-- Like you said, moving all over. And when I do stay in one place, it hardly seems worth it. Got a couple inns where they’ll always have a room for me if I need it, but…” He shrugs. “Don’t own much. Don’t _need_ to have a room at night, unless the weather’s bad or I want a fire and a roof and some quiet. I like a bed but…”

 

    “Mostly at this point, they don’t even tell me where to go. They just want me to spread things around, it’s all at my discretion, but it’s so much moving. And it’s so difficult getting reports filed properly-- does your side ever credit you with things you didn’t do? I mean when you haven’t lied about having done them.”

 

    “Sometimes. I just take it.” Says Crawly.

 

    “I’ve been commended for the establishment of the rule of law just this year, and I hadn’t even been aware of it. Here, I mean.”

 

    “Oh. My side did the same for me. Wasn’t sure what they were on about. Thought this place was a kingdom a while now.”

 

    “Yes, but they didn’t have a rule of law.”

 

    “Well. Either way, if the boss is happy, I’m… here and in one piece, which is about as near happy as you can ask for in my neck of the woods.”

 

    “I just wish there was some way of-- no.” Aziraphale frowns, taking another drink. Coughing on it a little when he remembers the way Crawly had tongued the shared bottle.

 

    “Wish there was some way of what?”

 

    “It’s ridiculous, you’ll think it’s ridiculous. I mean we’re not even supposed to be friends-- ly, friendly, we’re not…” He twists a hand around the neck of the bottle. “This is… it’s treason. It’s _blasphemy_. I’ve already betrayed-- We’re too close as it is.”

 

    “Breathe.”

 

    “I don’t need to breathe!”

 

    “All right, don’t breathe. Just don’t… don’t be like _this_ at me without even telling me what’s so treasonous.”

 

    “I’ll calm down, I’ll calm down. But you can’t ask me to _say_ it!” Aziraphale surrenders the bottle, wringing his hands a bit.

 

    He wants it, desperately, a way of helping each other. Heaven wouldn’t look kindly on it if they ever knew, but… but if he and Crawly could just… take some of the burden off, they could breathe a little. They could settle a little. They could have things-- he knows he oughtn’t want material things, but a wardrobe to hang his clothes in and perhaps a book or even two, and a table and two chairs, two plates, two cups for wine…

 

    Just in case, having a little place to live, he was ever in the position to provide hospitality to a stranger! That would be a good use of his having property and maybe a bed. Not that he would be expecting company, in keeping an extra cup and plate, no. Not that he would be hoping for company.

 

    If he and Crawly could just work together in a limited sort of way that would keep everyone happy, somehow, life would be better for both of them.

 

    And when did he begin thinking of it as life, anyway? He’s an angel, he hasn’t got a life. He knows that.

 

    “I just--” He begins again, flapping a hand at Crawly when he tries to offer the last dregs of the wine. “It would be… _beneficial_ , and I know Heaven won’t see it that way, but it wouldn’t do anybody any good if we were at each other’s throats. Surely Raphael would have to admit if I pressed him to, that… Well, no. I don’t think I’d like to ask him what he thinks of the idea.”

 

    “What idea?”

 

    “No idea at all. I just-- It isn’t as if it would do any good in the long run if we fought each other. And whatever else he thinks of you, Raphael would have to admit, I’d have been up the creek without a paddle if I’d smote you before-- before Alexandria.”

 

    Crawly opens his mouth, and closes it with a click. Aziraphale looks at the river as if he’d never seen one before and it was important to him to commit all details to memory.

 

    “What if we worked together?” Crawly says at last, and that does get Aziraphale’s attention.

 

    “I beg your pardon? I am an _angel_! Of the Lord, no less!”

 

    “And I’ve _been_ an angel, angel. Look, it’s not difficult. I can do anything you can do. And you can certainly swing a minor temptation-- nothing bad, nothing that crosses the line. An apple stolen off a neighbor’s tree--”

 

    “Oh, yes, you _would_ tell me that’s a minor thing to tempt someone into!”

 

    He winces. “Or an extra helping of something at dinner, or a nap when someone’s got work to get on with. Not soul-shattering levels of gluttony and sloth, little things. You’re not going to damn anyone, but--”

 

    “But why should I? That’s what I’d like to know!” Aziraphale demands, but he feels as if he must be quivering. He feels as if he might faint. Crawly’s hand covers his, cool and firm and strong, and his heart quickens. He should, because it’s his idea, too. Because he wants to, longs to. But how can he ever admit as much?

 

    “Because I’m doing your job, too, that’s the beauty of it! And if we’re both doing both jobs at the same time, then we each have to travel half as much!”

 

    “That doesn’t work at all.” He leans away, but doesn’t withdraw his hand.

 

    “You _know_ it does!”

 

    “Crawly…” He shudders once. His two options seem to be to shut off his breathing altogether, or to let it come in strong, rapid gusts that almost seem to shake him.

 

    “You know it does…”

 

    “No. Not-- If we’re pretending we’re both in the same places at the same times, it doesn’t… What if you’re off doing a miracle for me in Ankara or something and I’m off doing one in bloody… I don’t know, Bali?”

 

    “Are you likely to be off doing miracles in Bali?”

 

    “I don’t know, I might do!”

 

    “We’ll work it out. We’ll… we’ll keep in touch about these things. We’ll get houssses where we can call on each other and make arrangementsss.” His tongue, more forked than usual, flicks out over his lip, nervous. “Aziraphale… we could do thiss-- we could--”

 

    Aziraphale takes his hand out from under Crawly’s, and watches the fire in his eyes dim. He ought to say no. He ought to walk away.

 

    He rests his hand atop Crawly’s instead, with a warm press that has hope flaring up in those eyes again. Why it should move him so… For a moment, he tastes the ghost of a honeycomb sitting on his tongue.

 

    “If we are to work together, we have to be careful. We can’t… we cannot forget ourselves. We have to give each other full accounts of all minor miracles and temptations, Crawly. We have to know what we’re talking about when we report to our superiors.”

 

    “Of course. Whoever goes will fill the other in on his return, whoever stays doesn’t do anything flashy until it’s over. Where do you think you’ll settle down?”

 

    “Well-- here, of course.”

 

    Crawly groans.

 

    “Why, what were you thinking?” Aziraphale bristles and lets go of his hand.

 

    “I don’t know. Spain, maybe, or France. Someplace nicer than this!”

 

    “I _like_ England.”

 

    “Oh, keep your England.” Crawly scowls. “Fine. You settle here, it’s barely a flight at all from France. We’ll carry on as usual mostly, but when it starts to get to be too much and it feels as if there’s no time, you’ll call on me or I on you, and we’ll take turns doing it and having a break.”

 

    “And if we’re going to do this, we can’t… we can’t be fighting each other on things. That is to say-- if I’ve laid any sort of protection on someone or healed something, you can’t come along and undo it, or do something terrible where I’ve done some good. And that goes for good-by-proxy! You can’t undo a good deed you’ve done on my behalf with wickedness.”

 

    “Fine. Once I’ve done my tempting, though, you can’t sweep in and give some grand angelic lecture against sin-- and that goes for temptation-by-proxy, as well!” Crawly says, with a triumphant little laugh. “Oh, not so easy when it’s on the other foot, is it? Once someone’s been tempted, you’ve got to let them make the choice, you can’t sweep back in for a counter-argument!”

 

    “Fine!” He thrusts his hand back out. They shake.

 

    “We ought to put it in writing. Make it all clear.” Crawly says. When he passes the wine bottle back to Aziraphale, it’s fuller than it had been.

 

    “Certainly. We don’t want any room for misunderstanding.”

 

    “You say that like you expect me of mischief so soon.” He practically purrs. “Don’t you _trussst_ me, angel?”

 

    Aziraphale’s skin feels tight and too hot, and he itches in weird places. He feels guilty, even if Crawly is teasing rather than hurt, for intimating that he might try to game the system.

 

    “I trust you with my _life_.” He whispers. “But I can’t make a deal with a _demon_ and not be certain of things, it’s not about _you_ , it-- oh-- oh dear, oh no, I-- I’ve made a deal with a demon. We’ve already shaken hands! I’ve already done it!”

 

    There’s no use fighting the rising tide of hysteria. He tugs at his hair-- in his current incarnation, rather limp curls which might be described as blond only in the absence of any other color, shoulder length and perennially tangled.

 

    Always a bit curly and always a bit messy, Crawly thinks, as he reaches over to try and remove the angel’s soft hands from their decidedly un-soft task. Always a bit blond, even when it had come in the form of sun-gold highlights threaded through a halo of warm black curls.

 

    His own hair, at present, is a wine-dark cascade that falls like silk over one white shoulder, that gleams prettily and does not tangle. There are a few circumstances he can think of under which he would like to have Aziraphale pulling on it instead of his own.

 

    “It’s all right.” He promises, and shoves all thoughts of hair-pulling to the side.

 

    “No it’s not! Do you understand the kind of sin that is? Do you know what you’ve done to me?” He demands, tears springing to his eyes.

 

    Blue now, which suits him better than the blank silver of Heaven ever did. And which suit him more than anything in Hell ever could.

 

    “No. Aziraphale, no.” He releases one of his hands, so that he can wipe at one cheek, only a little clumsily. He’s not really drunk, but he takes a moment to fully sober himself anyway. “No, it’s not like that for us. I wouldn’t do that to you! I wouldn’t let that happen. I’d be smited first.”

 

    Aziraphale squeezes his eyes shut, and says nothing. Crawly produces a handkerchief and dabs uselessly at his cheek, before simply dropping the handkerchief into his lap.

 

    “Unless it’s smote.” He adds, with a desperate little laugh.

 

    “I think so, yes.” Aziraphale answers dully.

 

    “Oh.”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “I wouldn’t let you Fall.” Crawly presses. “I wouldn’t cause you to. On my life, I wouldn’t do that to you. Maybe it’s a damnable offense for a human to make a deal with a demon in exchange for power or wealth or… whatever else humans lust for enough to trade their souls away, but that’s not what you’ve done.”

 

    “What _have_ I done? Oh, what have I _done_?” Aziraphale moans, the hand Crawly isn’t holding fast to returning to pull a handful of his hair.

 

    “You’ve made a deal with a friend. To do each other favors.”

 

    “We’re not friends, we’re enemies.” He says miserably.

 

    “You’ve called me your friend before.” Crawly leans in. Their foreheads touch. “You have.”

 

    “I oughtn’t to’ve.”

 

    “Nothing’s changed, has it? You’re still an angel. You think there’s paperwork to a Fall? Believe you me, I’ve seen new guys get knocked down to demon before, and it just happens. You do the wrong thing and you’re tainted, they don’t wait around for the next performance review. When you made a deal with me, you must have thought of me as a friend, and you must have believed you were doing the right thing. And you are-- all you have to do on your end to uphold our bargain is offer humans the opportunity for a moral choice, which is not inherently evil-- plus you’re keeping me from doing worse. But you’ve got me agreeing to do good. It’s stacked to your side. Aziraphale… if you thought you were making a deal with ‘a demon’, you wouldn’t have done it. You made a deal with _me_ , just me.”

 

    “What if I’ve Fallen and I don’t know it yet?”

 

    “Trust me, you’d know. Do… do you want me to-- to have a look at you?”

 

    “What do you mean have a-- Crawly, no. _No_.”

 

    “If you’ve Fallen, it won’t hurt me.”

 

    “I nearly killed you when we did it before! And-- you’re sure I’d know, if I had?”

 

    “Aziraphale, you’d _know_.” He cups a hand around the side of his neck, guiding him back into eye contact, looking over the top of his lenses. “You would be cut off from everything. You’d feel cold. You’d be in pain all over when it first happened.”

 

    He relaxes, and leans back into Crawly, doing his best to let his nerves subside. A shudder wracks him now and then.

 

    “You knew I hadn’t and you still offered to… to look into me?”

 

    “If it would calm you to know you’re the same as you ever were. It wouldn’t be like before, it would be a lot quicker.”

 

    “I’d rather wander around never knowing than put you through that.” Aziraphale’s arm comes up around Crawly, weakly. “I couldn’t do that to you, you’d be-- I couldn’t.”

 

    Crawly just holds him until he seems to be all right, and ignores the pang in his own heart. He feels on some precipice, he feels on the edge of some great chasm, just waiting on a word from Aziraphale to push him forward or back, unsure which way he wants to fall. He _wants_ him, he wants so badly to know his essence again. It’s not enough to seek out libraries not on hallowed ground, where he can stick his nose in a book and breathe in a scent he knew long before books were first bound, he needs the taste of Aziraphale on his tongue, he needs the gentle warmth and the divine fire, he needs the sharp steel and the soft mercy so much greater than any other mercy…

 

    He doesn’t care if it hurts.

 

    Aziraphale cares if it hurts him.

 

    What does he even _do_ with that? He would die before he led Aziraphale to Fall… and Aziraphale wouldn’t think about Falling if it was a question of keeping him from harm.

 

    What do you do when someone cares about you like that?

 

    You kiss him, he thinks, but he can’t kiss Aziraphale. They’re knelt on the banks of the river together, and it would be so easy if they were men, if they were just men, with Aziraphale slumped against him, with his hand sliding from his neck to his round cheek. If they were men, he would. It wouldn’t have to lead to anything, it could be a kiss between friends, but it could _be_. Whatever arrangement they have as enemies, kissing isn’t a part of it, and can’t be. Even if he could kiss him once as a friend and not be tempted to take more, it crosses a line they don’t get to cross. An angel might be able to make a deal with a demon, if he thinks of him as a friend, might be able to do this and not Fall. To kiss one?

 

    He’d beg Aziraphale to smite him first.

 

    He’s already smitten.

 

\---/-/--

 

    They set up little places, opposite sides of the channel. It’s really not a difficult flight to make from Crowley’s little place on the beach up to Aziraphale’s cliffside cottage. When Crawly touches down this time, Aziraphale is outside, and he wonders if he’d anticipated him, or if he had merely been out on the cliff, like old times.

 

    “It’s like the place you had in Greece.” He observes. 1172 and he could use a break, he just could. The kind of needing a break that’s brought him to Aziraphale’s doorstep.

 

    Aziraphale is wearing something that might pass for fashionable in England, but to Crawly’s eyes it’s a rather shapeless pale blue tunic over buff leather leggings. That the leggings do hug the full curves of Aziraphale’s calves is beside the point-- it does not make them fashionable just because the legs within them are seductively shaped. The fact that the tunic has been dyed is something, but there’s barely any embroidery. Crawly’s tunic is a silver-black silk brocade, sleeves fitted tight to his wrists, waist nipped in only for it to flare out below the line of his belt, and it’s trimmed with black fur. If you asked Crawly what animal the fur came from, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Or if he did, you’d assume his answer of ‘snake’ was a very different kind of joke from what it was.

 

    He lets Aziraphale give him a tour of slight changes to the little one-room cottage before bringing up business.

 

    They’ll take turns, of course. They’ll figure out how long they’ll each be, agree on places, and meet up after, but it means each of them will have some time to enjoy the home he’s crafted. And Aziraphale’s is spartan, but…

 

    But outside he has a plum tree and a wooden bench and that same feeling of a breeze coming off the ocean that would lift your wings if you asked it to. Inside, he has a place to work, he has shelter from the weather and places to keep his few belongings, but it’s the outside that seems to bring pleasure, even without a proper garden. Crawly can just picture him on his bench, with one of his two books. Did he make them both himself? He can picture him enjoying the sunrise. He can picture him tasting his plums.

 

    No. Not tasting, _eating_. Sucking the flesh from the pit right at the end and all. Aziraphale doesn’t waste anything. He certainly wouldn’t waste valuable plum by merely _tasting_.

 

    Crawly, on the other hand, is a creature who tastes. He plucks one of the plums from Aziraphale’s tree, and sprawls beside his bench rather than sitting on it, and he takes a single luscious bite just to feel the snap of the skin and the give of the flesh under his teeth, just to taste the sweetness and the tartness on his tongue, just to let the juice drip down his chin.

 

    “Care for a bite?” He asks, stretching the hand with the plum out towards the bench, where Aziraphale is sat very primly even for him.

 

    “You… you have a bit of…” Aziraphale motions.

 

    “That’s part of the pleasure of it. Go on, take it, I’m not really going to finish.”

 

    “You would just throw away well over half of one of my plums!” He tuts.

 

    “That’s why I’m offering it to you, isn’t it? So I don’t have to throw it away. Anyway, no harm in doing that, the birds will eat it. Does not your boss provide for the sparrow, and all that?”

 

    “I highly doubt _you_ are His instrument, all things considered.”

 

    Crawly just flashes him a grin. Aziraphale takes the plum, flustered.

 

    He likes plums, he does. He wouldn’t have a tree full of them if he didn’t. But… normally he cuts them up inside and he eats slices as neatly as possible, and sometimes he even cooks with them, though he has yet to master any proper cooking. Normally, he does anything other than eat them out of hand, as they prove to be rather messy, a point Crawly has just proved.

 

    He watches the demon wipe the juice from his chin with the back of his hand, and then lick said hand like a cat.

 

    A cat with a snake’s tongue, but a cat nonetheless. He radiates a sense of sheer enjoyment in it, pure hedonistic pleasure. For the juice and for the uncouth act of licking it up so, and for the sunlight he’s lying in, all stretched out so. It’s that sort of day, Aziraphale thinks. That sort of day where anyone looking at Crawly might see him for exactly what he is. Serpent of Eden… all tempting wiles and…

 

    And he doesn’t know what else. He doesn’t know why the thought strikes him at all, except maybe because he’s just accepted a piece of fruit from him. But even that he doesn’t think should count, it’s a plum from _his_ tree. There’s no reason not to eat it.

 

    The first bite is the messiest, which Crawly has spared him worrying about, at any rate. He pushes the thought of Crawly’s mouth having got there first from his mind and he dives into the second bite. If he just doesn’t _think_ about anything, he can enjoy himself. But that’s often the way… the more he thinks, the greater his troubles. He just doesn’t know how to shut the thinking _off_.

 

    The pleasure of eating at least gives him something to focus on, to keep complicated thoughts at bay. He focuses only on the individual sensations. Taste, sharp-sour and flatly sweet at once. The softness of it, the wetness of it. The way it feels to swallow and to _feel_ it move down his throat.

 

    He’s never focused so deeply on the act of swallowing. He’s never bothered to feel the way he feels now, the coolness and the mass of it moving all the way down to his stomach. He takes another bite, doesn’t finish chewing and swallowing before taking the next. Focusing so deeply on it, he’s driven to more. To feel the curious sensation of it again. To _enjoy_ it all.

 

    Before he knows it, he’s polished the plum off, is holding the pit in his hand, and Crawly is _staring_ at him. He licks his lips, self-conscious, but he doesn’t seem to be particularly messy. There’s a bit of stickiness on his hand, a bit at the corner of his mouth, but nothing like the Crawly had been.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Nothing.” Crawly swallows.

 

    Aziraphale rises, moving to the cliff, dropping the pit and letting it bounce its way down to the sea.

 

    “Do you want another?”

 

    He turns, face heating. “Another?”

 

    “Yeah.” Crawly offers it, already plucked. “Another.”

 

    He does. He shouldn’t, should he? But he does.

 

    For a long moment they stand there, hands lingering, before Aziraphale fully accepts the plum. He stares out to sea as he eats it, trying to go slow despite the urge to take bite after bite, to have his mouth _full_.

 

    “Aziraphale?” Crawly interrupts. “Could-- could I have the last bite?”

 

    “Could you…?”

 

    “Well… don’t want a whole one. Just the first bite, and the last one.” He shrugs. He looks so self-conscious himself that Aziraphale has to take some pity on him.

 

    He hands over the pit, last chunk clinging to it, dripping, the scrap of shiny near-black skin and the golden-orange flesh. He watches Crawly suck the flesh from the pit, with a decadent little sound. He licks it clean, then winds up and throws the pit as hard as he can out to sea.

 

    “Did you ask for the last bite when you only really wanted the pit?” Aziraphale asks, trying not to laugh.

 

    “No.” He scowls a bit, though it softens quickly. “I did want another bite. You were enjoying it so much… Didn’t want to go and pick another whole one. But I think it’s a _waste_ you don’t chuck ‘em every time, it’s _fun_.”

 

    “I do know how to have fun.”

 

    “Oh, do you? You’re not just a slave to your _duty_ , then?”

 

    “I do my duty, but I know what fun is. I have fun things!”

 

    “You have two books, and one of them is what you copied down from a bible-- which you don’t need on account you were there for half of it!-- and the other is what you copied down from the Chronicle of bloody Princes, which is worse. Do you play games? Swim? Dance?”

 

    “Angels don’t dance.”

 

    “Angels don’t do a lot of things. I bet you angels don’t eat plums, I bet you angels don’t-- I bet you they just don’t have any fun, Upstairs, like you could do here.”

 

    “I have better things to do.”

 

    “Not now you don’t. Not if I go first. I’ll be gone six months. _You’ll_ be here, having _fun_. Fun, mind, no work, because it all falls apart if you go making miracles while I’m covering our jobs.”

 

    “I will have fun. Thank you for volunteering to take the first shift.”

 

    “Oh, you’re welcome. I’m going to hear all about this fun you have!”

 

    “I wouldn’t dream of not telling you all about it.” He folds his arms, nose in the air.

 

    “Six months.”

 

    “I’ll see you then.”

 

    Crawly takes off. He doesn’t know why he should be so snippy over it, why either of them should be. Maybe it was foolish and silly of him to want to see how far he could throw the pit. Maybe he’s taking it too personal, though what ‘it’ is he’s taking so personally he doesn’t know.

 

    In six months’ time, he returns to Aziraphale’s cottage, with no more answers than when he’d left-- not about Aziraphale, not about his feelings. He knows one thing he hadn’t when he’d left, though, and it’s enough.

 

    “Crawly!” Aziraphale greets, throwing his door open wide.

 

    “Erm-- erm, not anymore.” He alights on the path to the door. “Crowley.”

 

    “Oh?”

 

    He shrugs. “It’s… familiar enough, but it’s… I never liked ‘Crawly’, really. It was always sort of… not me. But I heard ‘Crowley’ and I thought… yeah. That could be me.”

 

    “You should have told me you didn’t like your name. Your old name. I wouldn’t have used it.”

 

    “I didn’t mind you using it.” Another shrug, and he wonders if he’s blushing. It feels as if he should be. “You don’t sound the way they do, in Hell. But it… it’s the name they gave me. Lucifer gave me. And I just never knew what else to be. Couldn’t remember who I was before that.”

 

    “If I’d known you hated it, I could have used the names you gave to humans. Anthony or… or whatever you like.”

 

    “Anthony Crowley. First and last. Much better than before.”

 

    “Crowley.” Aziraphale smiles, and reaches out to take his hand. “Come in, dear boy, and tell me everything you’ve done-- everything I ought to know about.”

 

    Crowley does.


	11. Whatever Here That's Left Of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unhappy parting dragged on too long, and a too-happy reunion cut short.

    “Crawly.”

 

    Crowley’s head jerks up, and he scrambles to his feet. He’d been at his house long enough to dare a little garden, he’d been tending his planter box of onions, he hadn’t expected an emissary from Hell. If he had done, he wouldn’t have been gardening.

 

    He picks up his watering can and swallows. “Care to come in for a drink? How’s, erm, how’s tricks?”

 

    “Oh, Hell is doing well, if that’s what you mean.” The demon does not look particularly impressed with him. He doesn’t know him except to nod to, but he knows he works under Belial, which gives him some faint hope that this might be a friendly message. Well, friendly for Hell.

 

    “Good, good. How’s Belial?”

 

    “Advantageously positioned, after recent events.”

 

    “And how did recent events, ah… go?”

 

    “Well. What’s all this for?” He flaps a hand towards the planter box, before following Crowley into the little house.

 

    “Dunno.” Crowley admits. Onions, it’s not as if he was going to eat them. But finding the bulbs to replant had been easy, and they grow quickly enough, and it’s something until he can get things how he really likes them. “Just convenient. I mean-- people, you know, they do that. Grow these things. So if I’ve got some, it looks normal.”

 

    He wishes he hadn’t been home. He sets his watering can on the table, and pours out two cups of wine, and wishes he was up in England with Aziraphale. Except right now, Aziraphale is off doing both their jobs who knows where, which is why he’d been so free to just hang about getting a garden going.

 

    No. No, he doesn’t wish he was up in England with Aziraphale. Because Hell would have found him there. Best to get this over with here at home.

 

    “Look, Crawly--”

 

    “ _Crowley_.” He says, quickly and firmly, quite surprising himself with it. The other demon isn’t any more important than he is, just more demonic. Just more in the swing of things, and he never quite feels comfortable trying to talk down someone who’s got the swing of life in Hell. It’s about who you know, and all. But it feels _important_ , in some way he can’t define. He’d let it go the once and he can’t let it go again. “It’s Crowley, actually.”

 

    “Is it?” His guest-- to use the word loosely-- sneers at him from across the table. “I never did understand you… You’d have been my master’s left hand, in Hell. You’d have been in the inner circle of Lucifer himself. Lucifer, who named you when you Fell, when you shed everything about Heaven and embraced your true nature.”

 

    Crowley’s skin prickles. _I named me_ , he wants to say. _And Heaven shed_ me. This time, though, he holds his tongue and shrugs, keeping his posture loose.

 

    “You could have had it all.”

 

    “Lucifer has been generous enough with me. I don’t want for more.”

 

    “What could you possibly get up here that’s better than Hell?” He demands, and Crowley doesn’t quite know what to say.

 

    ‘Fucking take a look’ comes to mind, of course, but there’s no arguing with demons who actually _like_ Hell.

 

    “Job satisfaction?”

 

    “I don’t like you, Crawly, and I don’t trust you. Belial likes you, but not enough to ask a lot of questions.”

 

    “What?” Crowley says, and then he sees the knife.

 

    “You can run if you like. I’ll be happy to chase you. You’ll spend the whole time knowing this won’t be mere discorporation. And I will catch you.”

 

    Running sounds attractive, but where does he run _to_? Being actively chased is a whole different story from trying to avoid being found in the first place, he can’t lurk in the shadows of a monastery and hope to go unnoticed. He can’t go anywhere where another demon won’t be able to find him, won’t be able to follow. But what are his options? Fight? He hasn’t got a weapon that would do more than discorporate. And not one that could be used at a distance, that he might take the-- cursed? _Blessed_?-- knife off of a corpse. For all he knows, the knife is just a knife, and some secondary ritual is planned for him.

 

    Just then, the door swings open, and Crowley’s survival instincts are torn between keeping his eyes on the knife and looking to the door. He scrambles back against the wall to where he can see both, and his heart sinks. It was bad before, but now… now he really is blessed.

 

    “Hullo, dear, I hope you don’t min-- oh.” Aziraphale looks at the demon. He looks at Crowley. He looks at the table with the two cups of wine. He looks at the knife. “Crowley. Get _out_.”

 

    “Aziraphale--”

 

    “ _Run_.” He says. His voice is steely and calm and pointed, and it doesn’t quite sound like him.

 

    Crowley obeys. He’d like to think he’s compelled by some angelic force, and he’s afraid it doesn’t work that way, and that he’s a coward. But the things that would kill a demon won’t kill an angel-- would they?

 

    There’s an inhuman sound, an unholy sound-- and of course it’s inhuman, he thinks distantly, as he stands at the end of the lane with his heart beating fast, his lungs heaving. Heart and lungs that never do much of anything, mostly, but they make up for the inactivity now. Of course it’s unholy. But it isn’t Aziraphale.

 

    When Aziraphale comes stumbling through the door-- it seems an eternity has passed!-- Crowley starts forward, but Aziraphale throws up a hand to halt him.

 

    “Don’t!” He cries, his voice pained and weak, and yet still commandingly stern. This… the unseen steel and fire from the heart of him. He’d always known it was there, no matter how often it hid beneath wittering and waffling and worrying. “Crowley, you mustn’t touch me. You mustn’t go in there.”

 

    He staggers forward a ways from the house and collapses, and Crowley rushes to his side, though he does as told and refrains from touching him. He kneels down and look him over. He’s covered in water and wine, must have upended the table with the cups and the bottle and the watering can. One arm is coated in foul-smelling black gunk that still bubbles. The other arm wraps around him, hand pressed over a wound, blood thicker and redder than the wine.

 

    “Aziraphale!”

 

    “Don’t worry, my dear, it-- it’s only my vessel, that’s all.” Aziraphale gasps, whole body heaving. “I’ll be back.”

 

    “What can I do?”

 

    “Nothing. Crowley, swear-- swear to me you won’t go back… back into that house, not-- I don’t know when, if ever, I don’t-- Swear to me. And swear you won’t-- swear you won’t touch me, not even to move my vessel after.”

 

    “Yeah, fine, I swear it, what happened to you?”

 

    “Do you… remember… the monastery?”

 

    “Aziraphale, for Go-- for Sa-- for _somebody’s_ sake!”

 

    “And the fountain?”

 

    Crowley’s blood goes cold. It’s always cold, but it feels suddenly several degrees colder than usual.

 

    “Do you understand?” He wheezes.

 

    “Yes.” Crowley nods.

 

    “When… when I’ve gone, you must… contact Hell. They’ll be able to tell this was an angelic vessel… You’ll tell them you-- you discorporated me after… after I killed the other one. Can you do that?”

 

    He nods. “Yeah. I can do that.”

 

    It would be an easy story to sell. One of Belial’s underlings had come to him, one loyal servant to another, to update him on politics in Hell. An angel had surprised them. He could easily sell his being shaken as a reaction to the death his fellow demon had suffered, and yet…

 

    Curiously, he no longer feels any horror at it. It had once been the most terrifying thing he could imagine, and even a demon he didn’t like, he wouldn’t have thought deserved a fate like holy water.

 

    Now? It just seems practical.

 

    “Had to get yourssself covered in it so I couldn’t even do anything for you.” He huffs. But the wound is… it’s badly placed, beyond his ability to fix when he can’t use his powers to heal Aziraphale. He’s not sure he’d have had the stomach to help him along faster, either, even though it isn’t real, isn’t permanent.

 

    “Well… we never do make it easy, do we?” Aziraphale chuckles. It sounds _pained_. “Crowley? May I see you?”

 

    He leans into Aziraphale’s field of vision, and then he removes his lenses, and Aziraphale smiles up at him.

 

    “Thank you, dear. I’d like to… silly, like to not be… _alone_ , just now. You-- when Hell-- you were in Scandinavia last week… tempted a woman into… into leaving her husband. Leaving her husband for a lover. You-- you say you did that. Last week.”

 

    He’s impressed-- that’s well beyond what he’d imagined the angel would do on his behalf. He wonders how terrible the husband must have been, for Aziraphale to consider breaking a marriage.

 

    “All right.” He nods. “Scandinavia, last week. Aziraphale… you’re not alone. Is it-- does it hurt very badly?”

 

    “It shall pass.”

 

    “But it hurtsss now?”

 

    “No, my dear. Not so badly, now.” Aziraphale says, and a violent spasm wracks him.

 

    “Liesss from an angel. What’sss the world come to, I asssk?”

 

    Aziraphale’s smile is warm. Far warmer than a dying being has a right to be, in Crowley’s opinion. It isn’t fair. It isn’t. He ought to be comforting Aziraphale through his discorporation, Aziraphale shouldn’t be trying to comfort him.

 

    For a long moment they simply stay like this, silent save Aziraphale’s pained breaths, the odd tiny sound between grunt and whine. Eventually his hand falls away a little from the wound.

 

    “I-- I am--” Aziraphale starts.

 

    “Hushhh… no, ‘sss’right, shhh…”

 

    “ _Sorry_.” He pushes the word out. “Ruining your-- house.”

 

    Crowley laughs at that. It comes out sounding wet and a bit sad. “You saved my _life_ , my real life.”

 

    “Oh. Still.” Aziraphale’s smile twitches. “ _Crowley_?”

 

    “Yesss?”

 

    “Eyesight’s… dimming. Could-- could you-- speak?”

 

    “Yeah. Yeah, of courssse-- course. Of course I… What do I even say?” He laughs again, and it’s less wet, but a bit more hysterical. “I mean-- I mean, _somebody_ , what do you sssay at a time like thisss? Aziraphale, I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I really owe you for this-- whatever the last favor I might’ve done, whatever the balance was at, I owe you for thisss one.”

 

    “No, my dear…” Aziraphale says, but it’s faint now, so much fainter than the last…

 

    “Yesss. I owe you a _vesssssel_ , Aziraphale. You’ve had yours ages! It-- and you’re like _me_ , I know you are, it’sss a real part of you. It-- it isn’t a thing you take off at the end of the day, it’sss real, and it getsss to be comfortable, you get into your bones and-- I _know_ you, Aziraphale, and I know a body’s not a thing you throw away. But you did for me. And I will for you if you ever need it, I-- I ssswear it by the Agreement. That’sss the only thing I have to ssswear by.” He gulps.

 

    Stupid, it’s only a vessel, like he’d said. He’d be back soon, it wouldn’t be the longest they’ll have gone not seeing each other. Stupid that his eyes should be wet over such a meaningless, small thing. Stupid and too human. But he’d have been gone forever, if Aziraphale hadn’t been there. This is more than Alexandria-- he’d been willing to be discorporated to save him then, but he’d been fine in the end.

 

    Aziraphale’s lips begin to form his name, and don’t finish. Air gusts past them with barely a sound. He just wants to be able to touch him. To hold his bloodied hand until it’s all over, to close his eyes when he’s gone. Doesn’t he deserve the comfort and the dignity?

 

    “I owe you a vessel.” He repeats, concentrating on mastering his tongue. Everything inside him is twisted up and lashing wildly, like a panicked serpent caught in a sack. “I’ll repay it ss-someday. Body for a body. We won’t be even until I do, so-- ssso-- so ssstick with me, angel, ‘til I repay you for this. When you come back to me-- to Earth, I mean. Don’t give up on me repaying you, I will. If it takesss a thousand years, I will.”

 

    “Never--” Aziraphale gasps. “Never smite-- smite-- Before, never--”

 

    “Sssmote someone, I know. It’sss all right.”

 

    “And I-- I just--”

 

    “Hush, shhh…

 

    “Just-- sm-- sm-- _ha_ \--!”

 

    “Don’t speak, don’t try, I know. I know, Aziraphale.You shouldn’t’ve had to do it, you’re too gentle for thisss… too much _Mercy_ in you, but I won’t ever put you through it again. I’ll handle it next time, promissse, I’ll handle it next time…”

 

    Unfair that even now, as his eyes dim and his breathing comes harder, Crowley still can’t do a thing but talk. He doesn’t think he’s got any more stomach than Aziraphale has for killing, but he means it when he promises. He intends to protect Aziraphale if ever the opportunity arises-- not only from death, but from having to kill. It’s just not his nature...even pushed to it.

 

    Aziraphale no longer heaves and spasms, no longer breathes in ragged gasps and hard gusts. No light behind the watery blue eyes, rosy cast already faded from the soft cheek, the full lip.

 

    Crowley stands, and moves away from the empty vessel. He wipes his eyes, and he contacts Hell.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Aziraphale feels a bit put out with the home office, if he’s entirely honest with himself. They’d had him waiting around what felt like ages for a new vessel, even when he’d pointed out that there was a demon running around unchecked all the while. They’d commended him for killing the one, of course, but he hadn’t really felt very proud of that.

 

    Not that he could tell them he’d only done it to save Crowley.

 

    It hadn’t felt real, and it still doesn’t. It feels like something that happened to someone else, a long, long time ago. He had seen the watering can, and the water had been recently drawn from a well, cold, he had seen the line where the outside was and wasn’t condensed and in an instant he had known how much of it there was. More than he would need.

 

    He’s eager now to know that Crowley is all right, but he doesn’t know where to find him. He won’t be at his old house. Surely discorporating an angel would get him out of any trouble he might have been in down in Hell…

 

    More than the wait, Aziraphale is put out with the home office for thinking one place was just the same as another, and dropping him miles from his own little home. He goes on wing until he knows the area enough to touch down and walk the empty road back. It’s a pleasant walk, with shade from the trees along the roadside, and little yellow butterflies that trespass on bell-shaped flowers. It’s not that he minds the walk so much as he minds that after everything, no one gave much thought to his convenience when they sent him back.

 

    Ahead, at the distant crossroads, a figure sits on a fallen log, and Aziraphale’s heart-- or something like it-- speeds. The wind that blows past him rustles neither branch nor flower. It smells of smoke.

 

    “Crowley.” He whispers, and he redoubles his speed.

 

    _Aziraphale_. Crowley spots him, and he knows him. He’d thought, in town, or he’d hoped… there had been a sensation up his spine as if… But he hadn’t been sure. Still, he’d hoped.

 

    With his home unlivable and Aziraphale’s sitting empty, Crowley had done the reasonable thing and spent the past month and a half or so living there. Waiting, hoping, idling… tempting, in a half-hearted sort of way. And then, at that sensation, one that wasn’t quite like feeling him, not really, he’d finished his business in town and hurried to the place where the roads would converge moving towards Aziraphale’s cottage, and he’d… well, not prayed. But he’d hoped a little harder.

 

    When Aziraphale reaches him, Crowley has a linen napkin spread across his lap, holding half a roasted chicken, and his grin is as casually lazy as if nothing at all had happened those six weeks ago.

 

    “Come and sit with me.” He invites. “They’ve sent you back looking different.”

 

    “Have they? I’m still settling into it, I’m afraid. It took forever to get through the work to release it.”

 

    “Yes, feels like it’s been ages.” Crowley agrees. “You’re _young_. I mean you look it. Well-- no. I mean… middle-aged, but… _youthful_. Younger than the last one looked.”

 

    “I haven’t seen myself at all.” He touches his face, but he can’t really make out much about it that way. He’s thinner than he was. Not too thin, perhaps, but he used to be more rounded.

 

    “Your eyes are darker.” Crowley says, peering at him. Hair the same lank, colorless blond curl, jaw-length, but there’d never been much color to his eyes before. They’d traded the silver of heaven for blue, but not very blue-- like a puddle reflecting a pale sky. Now they remind him of river water, not sea-deep, but deep, and shifting. As if they’re still trying to resolve themselves towards being a particular color, and haven’t yet settled on it. He’s never seen the process of it like that before. “Your lips are too thin. _You’re_ too thin.”

 

    “Yes, well. I expect I’ll soften over the next few days. It just needs to understand who it’s attached to, really. I’ve got to expand to fit my clothes, at least…”

 

    “You should eat with me.”

 

    “It doesn’t work that way.” Aziraphale protests, but he leans in a little nearer, tempted by the aroma. “I’ve never eaten an animal before.”

 

    “You don’t think it’s wrong to.”

 

    “Not for humans, no. But… I hardly need…”

 

    “Look, I’ve only bought half, someone else has eaten the other half, so there’s no bringing this one back now. And it’s more than I can really eat, so it’s a good deed if you have some.”

 

    “... It looks greasy.”

 

    “That’s part of what makes it good.”

 

    “I don’t like to be a mess.”

 

    “I’m already a bit, I could feed you a bite.” Crowley offers, before he can stop himself.

 

    Aziraphale’s eyes widen. Even now, as they circle around settling into being a color, the light in them is familiar to him. A flush takes his cheeks, and he blinks rapidly. His lips part, not so wonderful as his old lips, but still handsomely shaped, still pink…

 

    “I’m not sure I ought…” He begins.

 

    “I wouldn’t repay everything you’ve done for me with something I thought could be bad for you.” Crowley wheedles, holding up the drumstick, torn free of the thigh with a rather sickening sound. “Let me give you something nice. As-- To say thanks. Look, convenient handle, all you have to do is lean in and take a bite and see if you like it.”

 

    Aziraphale just barely nods. He leans in. He takes a bite.

 

    If the moan is any indication, Crowley thinks, he likes it.

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t have the words for it. It isn’t greasy all through, the way the surface is. It’s tender, but he wouldn’t call it ‘soft’. He doesn’t know how to describe the flavor, it’s not like anything else he’s had. Maybe other meats are similar, but even the savory foods he’s tried are nothing compared to this… His eyes flutter closed as he savors the experience of chewing it, swallowing. When they open again, he can’t be sure if Crowley is watching him, or simply facing him. He can’t say why the idea of being looked at makes him feel so. He watches Crowley take a bite from the other side of the leg, sees a flash of slightly-sharper-than-human teeth.

 

    This whole thing, it’s too human, that’s the problem. Food, it does something to him, he forgets himself.

 

    But… he’s never been told he shouldn’t eat…

 

    Crowley offers him the next bite and he takes it. It doesn’t take much to strip the leg clean, and he watches Crowley suck at the bone, and pull it from his mouth with a pop, watches him lick at it with a too-long tongue before tossing it into the underbrush nearby.

 

    “You know what, though, the new nose is an improvement.”

 

    “Hm?” Aziraphale blinks, confused, and Crowley taps the end of his nose. “Excuse me, I’ve barely had this and you’re getting grease on it!”

 

    “I like it. Remember the last one got broken a couple hundred years back and never healed right. Always looked a bit squashed. The new one’s nice. Turns up at the end a bit, that’s quite a departure.”

 

    “Does it?” He frowns. “Well… I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it. It never did before, mine have always turned down a touch…”

 

    “You had an upturned one once. Just at the very end. Remember? Just at the very end, the rest of it was beaky. That vessel didn’t suit you at all, mind. Handsome on the whole, but it wasn’t at all you.”

 

    “Oh, yes, I do recall.” He nods. The eyes had still been silver then, they hadn’t taken on a proper color yet. And he hadn’t liked the sort of attention he’d gotten. His lips had been full and he’d had a figure too much like Crowley’s, long and lean and muscular. It hadn’t felt right at all to live in. This one, he thinks, should adapt nicely. It’s not as heavy and rounded as he’d been, but it’s soft, it’s the right height. A few days and he’ll be his old self more than not.

 

    Crowley tears a bite free of the thigh, offering it up hesitantly.

 

    This… does not have a convenient handle of bone. But to eat it off the bone seems messier, the shape it is. And it is Crowley, they’ve fed each other before.

 

    He’d felt strange those times, too.

 

    He leans forward and takes it anyway. It _feels_ right against his teeth, he wants to soak up the flavor, wants more. This always happens, he doesn’t know how to stop it, he feels greedy the moment food is offered, and yet it’s such a pleasure he would hate to avoid it entirely. He would hate not to have this. He swallows, and opens his mouth to speak, but Crowley is already pushing the next bite past his parted lips, and his fingertips don’t brush those lips, they _slide_ , greased.

 

    Something jolts through him at that.

 

    On the next bite, they slide _in_. There’s as much flavor in the fat glistening on the surface-- and on Crowley’s hands-- as there is in all the rest, a flavor he can’t name, but he craves it as he’s not craved anything in a hundred years or more.

 

    More.

 

    _More_.

 

    When Crowley offers again, Aziraphale accepts. Before he can question himself, he catches Crowley’s wrist, licking his fingertips clean. He doesn’t follow down, where a drip of fat follows the crease of his palm, he doesn’t look for any more than just the first two fingers, the thumb-- just what’s already breached his lips once.

 

    “Oh--” His breath catches. He tears his hand away. “Dear-- I-- Crowley, please forgive me, that was-- impolite, I--”

 

    Crowley says nothing, only tears into what little there is on the wing and then licks his own hand clean. Aziraphale can’t see his eyes, past the lenses. He’s not sure if he wishes he could, or if he’s glad he can’t.

 

    This time, he cracks into the bones with his teeth, sucking at the marrow. Something in Aziraphale quickens, unconnected from any of him, connected to all of him.

 

    “Here.” Crowley offers him another bite.

 

    “I ought to-- I oughtn’t--”

 

    “Angel… you haven’t eaten in a month and a half. Aren’t you _hungry_?”

 

    “You know I don’t get hungry.” He says weakly. It should be true, and yet it isn’t. He has never felt a hunger like this.

 

    “ _Please_?” Crowley whispers, and it doesn’t sound like a temptation. It sounds tempting, but not… not on purpose. It only sounds _earnest_ , and as desperate as he’d been the last time they had been together, when he had promised the world-- when he had promised his body.

 

    Vessel.

 

    Aziraphale wraps his hand around the back of Crowley’s as he leans in to eat from his fingertips again, a soft sound of pleasure escaping him. He can hardly breathe, or he’s breathing too much. Which it is he couldn’t say, either way it shouldn’t matter to him and yet either way he feels dizzy.

 

    “More?” Crowley asks, in that same desperate whisper.

 

    “ _Please_.”

 

    The bite he tears free next is bigger. The sense of _fullness_ on his tongue, against his cheek, is exquisite. Aziraphale is somewhere far, far sweeter than Heaven.

 

    He’s beautiful. Already he feels more himself. His throat seems softer, with that bit just under the chin that he’d seemed underfed without. His lips are the same shape, but the way they glisten now makes them feel fuller, and Crowley wants…

 

    Crowley _wants_.

 

    But he doesn’t _need_ \-- not that. The only thing he needs is this, is each bite lovingly slid onto Aziraphale’s tongue, the thought that he is… _nurturing_. He likes nurturing. It’s not very demonic, but it feels good. It feels good when it’s Aziraphale, repaying him all his past kindnesses as best he can. Watching him take pleasure in something. And pleasure is pleasure is pleasure, but Crowley has never felt called to pleasure like _this_ before. He’s seen humans do all kinds of things for pleasure and there’s a certain frisson he can taste on the air when they believe what they’re doing is wrong and they revel in it anyway, but it never _affects_ him. Nothing ever affects him, not like this. Nothing has ever made him feel so truly _carnal_ , but what else can he call this moment? The cracking of bones, the tearing of flesh, the teeth, the tongues, the _heat_ that courses through him where normally all is cold.

 

    The arousal is a little difficult to ignore, when Aziraphale licks his fingers, when he imagines the touch of that tongue anywhere else-- even right where it is would be enough, if he could have more of it-- and when he imagines licking the shine of fat from Aziraphale’s lips. With the last bite devoured, the last bones scattered to the brush for scavengers to find, Crowley takes his hand back, hungrily licking fingers already clean from Aziraphale’s mouth. The growl of _want_ he can’t quite smother, and suddenly Aziraphale is no longer gripping his wrist.

 

    “Oh--” Aziraphale says, and Crowley meets his eyes, sees the look in them. As if he’s just woken from a spell and isn’t sure he likes what he’s found.

 

    Well… what could Crowley have expected? He should never have asked so much. He should never have pushed, what has he done?

 

    “Aziraphale--” He starts, and realizes he really doesn’t know what to say. He licks his lips, nervous.

 

    “We shouldn’t see each other for a while!” Aziraphale blurts the words out in a rising panic, turning to face the road.

 

    “What? But I’ve only jussst got y-- But you’ve only just got back, I mean.”

 

    “We shouldn’t see each other for a while.” He repeats, forcing himself to calm, and almost succeeding. “Not so soon after you’re supposed to have killed me. It’s bad news if Hell finds out you’re-- or if Heaven does. It’s bad for us both either way. The wound’s too fresh to claim there’s nothing personal and business is business. We’ve made a mistake, sitting here.”

 

    “Just sitting here?”

 

    “You _know_ the mistake we’ve made! A couple of decades…”

 

    “A couple _decades_?” Crowley goggles at him.

 

    “A few.”

 

    “What, three?” He asks, and nearly reaches for Aziraphale then and there.

 

    “Five.”

 

    “ _Five_?”

 

    “We’ve gone longer. It’s not safe for us to see each other now!”

 

    Crowley knows he’s right. Hell, Heaven… either side would find it suspicious if they were too cordial too soon. But fifty years, when he’s only just got him back… when he’d had to see him die, and waited all those weeks!

 

    “Yeah. Sure.” He gets to his feet. “I’ll be back then. Erm-- Aziraphale…”

 

    “I appreciate your being sensible.” He nods, his hands flexing on his knees, his posture still so stiff. His chest still rising and falling so rapidly…

 

    The end of his nose still shiny.

 

    Crowley wipes at it with a clean corner of his napkin. “Take care of yourself.”

 

    “Oh-- and-- and you, d-- and you, thank you, Crowley. And you.”

 

    Crowley’s wings come out, and he takes off. Aziraphale looks up at last to watch him vanish into the distance, and it’s another several long minutes before he gets to his own feet, and walks the rest of the way home.

 

    When he gets there, the thick layer of dust he had expected is absent. For the first time, he lies down in his bed, and he tries to teach his new vessel how to breathe normally. It doesn’t seem very good at it just yet.


	12. But This I Am Denied

    Fifty years apart has never felt so long. Crowley lands at the end of the walk, Aziraphale’s little house before him, and his heart hammers beneath his breast. _Too long_. By the time he’s reached the door it’s open.

 

    “Crowley.” Aziraphale greets him, steps aside.

 

    Fifty years apart has never flown by so fast. He welcomes him in, feeling too much at the nearness. _Too soon_. They stand at his table and find themselves unable to settle.

 

    “Aziraphale…” Crowley grips the back of a chair.

 

    He’d slept in that bed. For six weeks he’d slept in that bed and he’d sat at this table, and he’d watched the sun set from the little bench out back, and he’d watched the birds peck at the highest plums in the tree, and he’d only sometimes hissed at them and they never took him very seriously when he did, and he’d…

 

    He’d missed this house more than his own, which he’d had to abandon. What must anyone have thought of the place, finding it, he doesn’t know. Sometimes he imagines a weary traveler knocking at the door, finding it abandoned, cautiously entering only to find whatever the remains of a demon hit by holy water might look like. Finding his possessions. The garden he’d started likely overgrown, choked with weeds and half-wild onions. But he’d barely begun it and it wasn’t anything he was attached to yet.

 

    He hopes someone had the good sense to loot the place, to take his few pieces of good silver and his jewelry and anything useful he might have bothered to have had. Bedclothes.

 

    “Please.” Aziraphale says at last, wooden and half ready to rush out the door. “Sit.”

 

    “Thanks.” Crowley does, moving slow, watching him as he might an animal. As he might watch a bird he desperately hoped not to frighten for once. How had they gone so wrong? He’d wanted Aziraphale to enjoy himself, and he’d wanted to enjoy it with him… had he been selfish? Had he been wrong?

 

    He dreams about his mouth sometimes. He dreams about what it would have been to kiss his lips, to taste him. Sometimes he dreams of Aziraphale yielding to him, forgetting their natures and the boundaries between them, dreams of tasting him deep, dreams of being once more wrapped in his essence without pain. The merging of their selves on every level. Sometimes he dreams of Aziraphale pushing him away in horror and disgust, dreams that Aziraphale would hate him, even fear him, dreams of betrayed tears, the little shake of his head, his breath catching on a soft ‘no’. On ‘how could you’. ‘I trusted you’.

 

    It’s more painful to have the dreams where Aziraphale pushes him away. It’s more painful to wake from the ones where he doesn’t.

 

    “Business as usual.” Aziraphale says carefully. “We should-- we should get back to it. Taking turns. Doing the job.”

 

    “Yeah, all right. I’m down in Sicily-- can’t miss me. Just outside Enna. Er-- you’ve got more books.”

 

    “Oh-- yes.” He smiles. It’s brittle, as if they were new, as if they hadn’t known each other so long, trusted each other so much. As if they’d never had… had so many things, the two of them, that no one else knows.

 

    “That’s nice.”

 

    That’s nice? Surely there are things he could say beyond ‘that’s nice’! It used to come easier. Even after a hundred years, easier. There are seven books on the shelf, only the oldest of which he thinks will have that scent on them… Not that he thinks he gets to ask to smell them, after everything.

 

    “Would you like to go first or shall I?” Aziraphale asks. Too prim, too brisk, too _business_.

 

    “I might as well.” He stands. “Business as usual. I, er… I’m going to go pretty far afield, I think, really shake the dust off. Been working too much locally and all, since we put things on hold. Be good to really… yeah.”

 

    “Wait-- Erm… we should…”

 

    “We should what, angel? I thought it was business as usual.”

 

    “We should drink to it?”

 

    Crowley softens. “Can’t say no to that.”

 

    He doesn’t suppose he could if he wanted to… it would be difficult, at any rate. There’s an ache in him after all this time, and a cup of wine with Aziraphale could soothe it some. He thinks of how Aziraphale had discorporated, as if it was nothing… as if it was fine to. Well, of course it was in the end, but still. He thinks of that day and he thinks of all the time he’d waited here, and he thinks of that day at the crossroads and the joy and the desire and the pain.

 

    “I hope it’s all right.” Aziraphale pours, they both settle back into their seats. “Let me know what you think.”

 

    It’s deep in color, and the taste that rises up from the cup to meet him is cloyingly sweet and heady. Strong stuff, different from what he’s used to…

 

    “What’s the variety?” He asks. He can’t nail down the region, or the type of grape.

 

    “Er, well… I made it. Is it all right?”

 

    _Made_ it. A horror fills him, and a light. Made it! Just like that, he’d taken… he’d taken a piece of Crowley and pulled it out of him and put it back forever touched, forever changed. Why had wine ever been a part of him? He doesn’t think he likes it any more than Aziraphale does, but he’s the one who once had it sitting on his heart. Since before wine existed, just as Aziraphale smelled of books which wouldn’t be crafted-- let alone old-- for millennia. Is this the predestined moment which made it precious to him, was he always only waiting for Aziraphale to give him a wine he had made?

 

    “With your plums?” He asks.

 

    “Yes. Oh, it’s terrible, isn’t it?”

 

    “No! No, it’s-- I like it. I couldn’t place it, that’s all.”

 

    “There were too many of them… didn’t want them to go to rot. A few that fall the deer will eat and the top branches are for the birds, but I-- I used to eat them. And now I don’t.”

 

    “No?”

 

    “No. I… I’m not eating, now. It’s a needless indulgence.” He says, and there’s something that undercuts his smug self-righteousness which hurts to see. “It’s really not proper angelic behavior. So I’ve tried my hand at winemaking and I’ve given baskets of the things away to people, and-- and it’s all right. It’s all right, I suppose. I shall forget to miss it in time, eating.”

 

    “You shouldn’t have t--”

 

    “ _Don’t_ you start. You _know_ why I cannot. It is a base thing for me, Crowley, you’ve _seen_ me.”

 

    “Yeah. I have.” He nods. And liked it, loved it, wants to see him again, wants to do it again… but he can’t say so, not when it distresses Aziraphale. But how could he convince him not to be distressed? “You can’t even eat your own plums?”

 

    “No.”

 

    “I mean, I understand, if-- if you don’t want to eat meat again, if that was too much or too human, but I’d have thought the plums were fine.”

 

    “No, I-- I could _feel_ it in me, there’s an awful, squatting, bestial thing. Even a plum isn’t harmless, and I don’t want-- I don’t want to be… _Wrong_. I’m an _angel_ , there are rules!”

 

    “There’s nothing for it? You just can’t ever eat?”

 

    Aziraphale shrugs. He doesn’t think he can. Bread has done it, the plums… true, nothing had been quite like the chicken, though the honey had come closest. Even the simplest foods he’d once sampled held in them that seed of potential. The strange hunger he shouldn’t have felt. The excitement that can’t be explained away. When he had felt nothing but the sensation of teetering on the razor’s edge of despair, when he’d been in danger of losing himself to it, when he’d had little care for himself, it wasn’t as bad but he still reacted to it, still accepted and ate food he did not need, and the more he improved the more he found pleasure in it, if not to the same terrifying degree.

 

    He thinks wine is all right. Sometimes he feels in the mood to drink until it affects him, until he is fuzzy and muzzy and warm and not too sensible, but he does not need to feel that way to enjoy it. He thinks wine can’t be _wrong_ , because it makes him feel…

 

    Not hungry, not greedy, not bestial and grasping.

 

    It makes him feel close to his own beloved friend, long lost now, but to feel close again to him is to feel close to the Host, too. When he feels distant from them, when he feels they forget him here on Earth, when he feels that love stretched too thin, he can think back to old conversations, old closeness, and he can feel warm.

 

    The plum wine, Aziraphale thinks, could use some watering down… it goes to his head a bit too fast. But he likes the sweetness.

 

    They drink in silence, but the silence grows a little more comfortable. When Crowley sets his cup aside with an air of finality, Aziraphale leans forward, not ready to see him go. Even after everything, how awkward, how mortifying… how much the memory still stings and gnaws, he still craves his company.

 

    “One more cup?” He offers, and watches Crowley hesitate, and smile.

 

    “One more.”

 

    One more soon becomes a third. Aziraphale lets his thoughts swirl through as they will-- they return back to his shame before, and they return to Heaven before the war. To the softness of a wing nudging into his own, to eyes that shone like stars, pale and warm and lovely, and the teasing smile that made that beloved face different from each perfect face like it.

 

    “What would you think of me?” He sighs into his own cup.

 

    “What do you mean what would I think of you?” Crowley asks.

 

    “Not you.” He looks up, and then away, feeling too-warm. Perhaps from the wine, but not only from the wine. “I-- I only mean… Me, sat here, drinking with a demon, what would-- what would anyone think of me? Up there.”

 

    “Well, they don’t have to know.” He whispers.

 

    “Wicked.” Aziraphale smiles sadly. “No, that’s… a half-truth. I don’t care what every angel thinks of me. But… you know the war, and… and how we all lost friends. I lost friends, too.”

 

    Friends. Once, Crowley had been his only friend, it’s one of his few memories of Heaven, and it’s one he clings to greedily. The sweet hesitation and the look that had blossomed across his face, and the pang of having let him believe it was all fine… He’d made others, though Crowley always hoped he remained the best. He’d always avoided interrupting when Aziraphale was with those others, the idea of sharing his company had been… as it is now, upsetting. Upsetting to see Aziraphale’s smile shining on another, when it ought to have been his. Sometimes he spoke with Raphael, or with a couple of the Principalities. Crowley can recall, vaguely, watching from a distance, and Aziraphale’s nervous laugh, the way he’d ducked his head down and looked at his feet and avoided another angel’s bright grin. The horror of his own desire to rush in and insert himself, to say ‘me, me, me!’, to demand Aziraphale be his alone.

 

    “I’m sorry.”

 

    “You must have as well.”

 

    “Lost enough, I suppose. But I wouldn’t know. Memories’re all bust.” He sips at his wine.

 

    “Someone…” Aziraphale draws a shaky breath. “Someone I once-- Someone beloved of me… I lost someone beloved of me.”

 

    Crowley’s gaze snaps up. Beloved? He thinks of Aziraphale laughing and squirming under the beaming smile of another, and he tells himself he shouldn’t dare hope. When he was off with Belial, with those who would soon rebel, Aziraphale had all the time in Heaven to love another. In his patchwork memory, he can only guess at it all, but he knows it’s foolish to hope it could have been him, worse to hope it could be him again.

 

    “And did he Fall?” He whispers.

 

    “Of _course_ he didn’t, he was killed. I was told he was… That they couldn’t even bring him behind the lines, that I might try to save him, he was killed. Outright.” Aziraphale’s voice is tight. He stares at the wall. “He was killed, how could you even ask? Of course he didn’t.”

 

    Crowley’s heart shatters.

 

    “I’m sorry.” He swallows. Knocks back what’s left of his wine only to discover it isn’t enough.

 

    “You didn’t fight. I believed you when you told me you didn’t fight… or perhaps I couldn’t sit here like this with you now, I-- I don’t know. He wasn’t the only one. Many were struck down and couldn’t be rescued… that’s nothing to do with us. But I wonder if he would forgive me, for enjoying your company now.”

 

    “Of course he would. If he loved you, he would. You’re alone on Earth and so am I… we were bound to have a-- an association. If he loved you, he wouldn’t begrudge you an old friend.”

 

    “And you know of love?”

 

    “I’ve loved.” Crowley insists. Why not twist the knife? “Before.”

 

    “You said you didn’t remember.”

 

    “I don’t. Except I remember I loved.”

 

    “Did he Fall?” Aziraphale looks at him at last, curious.

 

    “Of _course_ he didn’t.” He sneers, and turns away. “But I did.”

 

    “Oh.”

 

    “Yeah. ‘Oh’. Look, I’d better go, I’ve got work to get on with, don’t I?” He staggers to his feet, and forces the alcohol out.

 

    “You could stay.”

 

    “No. I couldn’t. Thank you for the hospitality, Aziraphale, the wine was much appreciated. But it’s business as usual now.”

 

    Outside, Crowley picks a direction, and takes off. He stops once, in someone’s field, and lets himself work out his frustration, his pain, his own sense of loss. Howls it to the heavens and tears at stalks of grain, and takes off again leaving a furious little broken place in the middle of the farm. He tells himself he feels better.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Crowley offers, after his first return, to just look after Aziraphale’s house while he’s gone on his own errand, but Aziraphale merely says it would defeat the purpose if he couldn’t enjoy his own home.

 

    It’s not that Crowley doesn’t like his house-- he does, very much. It’s big and it smacks of wealth, and he has an enormous soft bed, and he has two marble statues and one bronze one. He has a fireplace so large he could walk into it, and he has furs and blankets. He has a garden and a little orchard and a wall around it-- though there is a place where an enterprising lad could climb up the tree on the outside, across on a heavy branch, and come down on a tree on the inside, if he had a sack he wanted to fill with stolen fruits and vegetables.

 

    Not needing to eat, Crowley feels he should at least encourage young thieves in the making to pursue a life of crime.

 

    It’s the envy of all his neighbors, and everything he had said he wanted, once.

 

    He finds he misses Aziraphale’s modest single room.

 

    He finds he misses Aziraphale.

 

    Not that Aziraphale misses him, not the same way, so why he should care, he doesn’t know. The two of them enjoy their free time to themselves, and every now and then they run a shared errand, they make it regular and it’s all well and good-- except for when he tries to describe the things he’s tasted on his travels, and Aziraphale snaps at him to please not even talk about food, but he can’t help getting excited about the novelty and the sensory experience.

 

    It’s not that he doesn’t _try_.

 

    Aziraphale had been doing quite well not eating. He doesn’t think of it most days. He’s rarely tempted by his plums and he is un-tempted by the meals eaten at the nearby monastery where he spends his free time copying and repairing books-- and bit by bit works towards the next copy of his own. It isn’t a purely selfish act, he tells himself, because if there were another fire, he would have something he could give back, start them over from.

 

    He’s only sometimes tempted by smells in the marketplace, and even then he can push the want aside. It’s only when Crowley lands on his doorstep and practically salivates over his description of something he calls an absolute must that Aziraphale feels that creeping discomfort and heat, that ache of hunger. It makes him a bit irritable, but he can’t help being snappish when Crowley _knows_ he has had to give up all food.

 

    It’s not that he doesn’t _try_.

 

    In 1347, he shows up on Crowley’s doorstep-- at the gate in the wall around his house, at any rate-- and there’s no answer when he knocks. He hammers at it rather loudly, in the end, feeling put out. Crowley should have known he was coming-- should have expected his visit, should have felt him nearing.

 

    He waits all day and all night, knocking periodically, waiting for Crowley to either arrive home from town or emerge from inside. Eventually, he finds himself losing his composure.

 

    “Crowley, if you don’t open this gate this _instant_ I shall let myself in!” He calls.

 

    Well, shouts.

 

    All right, screams.

 

    “Sir, no!” A young woman passing by leaves the road past the house, rushing up to seize his arm. “Sir, you mustn’t!”

 

    “I apologize, dear lady, for any alarm, I assure you the gentleman who lives here is an old friend.” He says, attempting to extract himself, and stopping at the look that comes over her face. “What is it?”

 

    “Mister Anthony, he went inside and said he was not to be bothered because he is tired. No deliveries from town and no boys coming and going from the yard. But… the house has been silent two weeks now.”

 

    “I _assure_ you--” He begins.

 

    “You cannot go in, this is a house of illness. You won’t find him-- not--”

 

    “No. No.” He laughs, nervous. Crowley can’t _get_ ill. Or if he did, he would just make himself not be. He knows what she means, but he can’t explain to her that she’s wrong. “He’s just resting, he’s perfectly all right, he’s only the laziest creature ever to walk the earth, he-- oh, I can’t believe he’s done this to me…”

 

    “Sir, come with me. I’ll take you to the part of town where it’s still safe.”

 

    “No. I-- I’ll wait a little longer, thank you.” He withdraws at last from her hold, but touches her brow gently. “Bless you, dear lady, for your kindness. I’ll wait a little longer here.”

 

    Her. Her family. He can’t make a difference, he isn’t allowed-- not to so many. But he can make a little difference. That’s what people earn, isn’t it, when they show kindness to an angel in disguise?

 

    He’s going to murder Crowley for disappearing on him like this. Has he really been asleep in there two weeks?

  
    He waits another two weeks and then he gives up and moves on. He can keep doing _his_ job, anyway. The world needs it.


	13. Hoping and Wishing For the Mail to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley turns up at last.

    Sometimes, he worries-- never about the plague, of course, but about other demons. More often than not, though, when Aziraphale thinks about Crowley’s disappearance, he’s hurt. He’s _angry_. He doesn’t want to be, doesn’t like to be, but he is. The worry tempers it, when he’s away, but he drops by the grand house in Enna several times to no answer, and then, finally, to no Crowley at all. No breeze carrying smoke and brimstone to him, no tingle of nearness.

 

    Before, each return, the anger would flare up again and he would consider breaking in to shake him awake, to shout at him for being such a thoughtless beast. Every time, he would simply leave again-- what could he have expected? What did he think would happen when he put his faith in a demon? That life would be sunshine and roses? Angels don’t break into houses, no matter how put out they are with the occupant… but he’d like to have asked Crowley why such inconsideration, liked to have thought there might be some explanation, a real one, something… something other than a demonic nature behind this little betrayal.

 

    But when he arrives and Crowley is no longer there? He searches the town. It doesn’t take long… it doesn’t take long to search the whole area, to fly overhead unseen and seek out that feeling. But he isn’t anywhere around Enna at all. Had he been holed up in hiding after all? Had it not been safe for him to speak to an angel? He aches, he is sick, he regrets every moment of anger when he imagines another demon sat over his friend, keeping him prisoner in his own home, forcing him to think of excuses for Aziraphale’s attempts at begging entry… And what now? Had he been dragged back Below? Discorporated? _Worse_?

 

    When he finds him again, it’s been nearly ninety years. Crowley is in Florence, Aziraphale follows the hint of his presence through the city, he finds him at a _party_ , finds him _laughing_. Finds him with the same look he had had before-- if he had been discorporated, he’s had his new body long enough to shape it to the way he had been again.

 

    He is the only one in black. Split hose, the outer side of each leg black silk, red running up the inside, black velvet doublet-- full-skirted, but _several_ inches shorter than most, at such a formal event, and sleeves slashed to show the red silk beneath. Girdled with silver and rubies, and a necklace to match, his hair curled at the ends, black cappucio with its trailing fabric draped just so about the shoulders, silk against velvet against silk… Drawing near, he can see the elaborate rings on one hand when Crowley gestures-- a silver snake wrapped around one finger, another ring set with a large ruby, engraved with… something.

 

    “Cosimo, you do flatter me, but as I was-- Oh!” He turns, smiles at Aziraphale as if nothing has happened. “Angel, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

 

    “You-- you thoughtless beast!” Aziraphale smacks him in the chest with his handkerchief. It isn’t very effective as a blow, but it’s as much as he thinks he can really bear to do. “And here you are at a party!”

 

    “Now-- now I did go by your house!” He protests.

 

    “And how long did it take you?”

 

    “There was another family living in it!”

 

    “Just so! If you had been remotely on time, you’d not have found them, you’d have found me!” He slaps at him with the handkerchief again, though it still only really serves to make Crowley frown at him, perplexed. “ _Years_ you disappear on me, years! We had-- we had _arranged_ \-- And so many times I knocked on your door and don’t tell me you weren’t at home when I know that you were! And then I began to worry, and then I-- Just when I feared the _worst_ , you-- you devil, you!-- I see you at a _party_!”

 

    They’re being stared at, he knows, and yet he doesn’t care. It makes Crowley uncomfortable, and he revels in that a bit, though he knows he shouldn’t. These people don’t know Aziraphale and won’t remember him much when he’s gone from their midst, but some of them know Crowley. Well, let him explain why he has been publicly shamed for his unkindness, for his unreliability!

 

    “I can explain, in private.” He says, his voice low. “Look, I’ll make it up to you.”

 

    “Oh, will you?” Aziraphale sniffs, folding his arms. “Will you? After all this time, do you really think you can just… just make your pretty promises and smile your charming smile and I shall forget how you’ve left me waiting all this time? After what I have done for you? After all I’ve given? You’ve _hurt_ me, do you even realize that? No, of course you don’t-- what do you know of feeling? Really!”

 

    He turns, rushing out. He is not about to cry in front of a crowd, not about to cry over… over a demon who never once thought about his feelings! Laughing at a party, how could he?

 

    Crowley catches him in an empty bit of garden, hand closing around his arm.

 

    “Aziraphale, wait!”

 

    “What do you want? What do you have to say for yourself?” He jerks away, voice trembling. “Near to a _century_ , Crowley! We haven’t seen each other in near to a century! I couldn’t even tell you what awful deed I last did on your behalf now!”

 

    That’s a lie, he recalls very clearly that he’d tempted a man to steal, and the guilt had eaten at him for decades, too. But Crowley can explain to Hell what he’d been doing all that time, too, if he wasn’t there under their watchful eye unable to answer his door!

 

    “When’d you sell your house?”

 

    “You-- I--”

 

    “I went there and there were people, they couldn’t even tell me where you’d gone.”

 

    “I didn’t _sell_ it, I gave it them. They had nothing in all the world but what they could carry, fleeing the plague, and three little children.”

 

    “That long ago?”

 

    “Two years after I went to see you and was told you wanted not to be disturbed! Two years you could have come to me, or answered the door any of the many times I came to you!”

 

    “You gave away your house?” Crowley’s perplexed frown deepens.

 

    “I’m an angel! I don’t need a house, they needed a house, a house far away from the cities, what else could I have possibly done?”

 

    “Where do you live now?”

 

    “I don’t. I’ve been traveling. Doing my _job_.”

 

    “What about your books?”

 

    “In a monastery library, where they will be safe.”

 

    “I liked that house.” Crowley says weakly.

 

    “Yes, surprisingly, so did I. But I don’t _need_ it. Do you know what I needed, Crowley? I needed a friend. But I don’t suppose I have any of those, do I?”

 

    “Aziraphale--”

 

    “All your promises, all you’d have done for me, all you said you owed me… did you ever mean it? Or was it all just pretty words? Was I just a fool to believe you?”

 

    And there goes his dignity. Weeping, over a demon! Because he’d thought there was some love between them after everything, well it’s his own fault if that’s what he believed. It’s his own fault if he let himself believe Crowley was so different. That there was something buried deep beneath the brimstone in him. Maybe he remembers love, but he can’t feel it now, not properly. If Crowley had loved him, he wouldn’t have treated him so carelessly-- swearing on their Arrangement that he owed his very vessel and that he would be there, be true, and yet it’s the Arrangement he’s broken!

 

    “No-- no, Aziraphale, I’ve been the fool.” Crowley kneels, reaching up to take his arm again. “Look at me.”

 

    “Shan’t.” He sniffles.

 

    “Aziraphale. Oh-- where’s your bloody handkerchief got to?”

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t know, he must have dropped it in his rush to get away from the party, to find someplace Crowley _wasn’t_. But he isn’t about to say he’s lost it, either. He merely ignores the question. At some point, Crowley’s lenses had vanished as well-- his eyes shine yellow in the moonlight, and Aziraphale tries to avoid them, and wishes they were not so beautiful.

 

    Crowley rises, producing his own handkerchief, and Aziraphale bats him away halfheartedly at first, before consenting to having his tears dried. They come harder, at the sudden memory of a long-ago time and place, where Crowley’s tongue had flicked at his cheek… back when he’d not had hands. Let alone a handkerchief, Aziraphale supposes. When he had leapt to act, to stop the reason for Aziraphale’s tears. A time he hadn’t been the cause of them.

 

    “Aren’t we friends?” He entreats.

 

    “You haven’t behaved as one. Anyway, we aren’t supposed to be.” Aziraphale says, but he still allows Crowley to dry his tears. He still allows him to take his shoulder, their bodies tucked close, Crowley’s forearm resting firmly against Aziraphale’s own upper arm, the side of Crowley’s chest brushing his whenever a breath comes hard and hiccuping. Allows Crowley to lean in, nose gently bunting against one wet cheek.

 

    “But your favorite enemy?” He wheedles, and Aziraphale feels weak.

 

    “Don’t think you shall be so easily forgiven.”

 

    “Let me tell you what happened, and then you can decide. You can be angry with me, but let me tell you first.”

 

    “I shall be angry with you! What you’ve put me through...”

 

    “It’s just… the plague. It was the plague. I couldn’t take it.”

 

    “And I’m supposed to have had a fine and dandy time with it?”

 

    “I had a housekeeper.” Crowley whispers. “She thought I was a poor young man-- wealthy, I mean, but pitiable, with an affliction of the eyes. No sons, and… and she was… And I sent her into town on an errand. Aziraphale, nothing would have happened to me if I’d gone. But I didn’t know then… I didn’t know what had started spreading through the cities. She was so old, and so frail even for a human, and she didn’t want me to come near her, when she started to be ill, and it went so fast… By the time I realized any of what was happening, it was too late to heal her.”

 

    “I nursed humans I was not allowed to simply cure, too, and I loved them, and they died horribly, and I did not disappear for nearly ninety years.”

 

    “It’s not that she died.” Crowley’s voice is a dark whisper. Even with their faces pressed together, with his lips so near Aziraphale’s ear, he has to focus to hear. “It’s what I was too fool to realize… Aziraphale, when she took my money, I-- You’d have liked her, you know. She led a blameless life. I mean, real sssaint material. And-- and sssomeone knows, but I didn’t deserve the way she doted. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to damn her.”

 

    “Oh.” He breathes. His arms come up around Crowley, stiff and awkward.

 

    “I didn’t mean to thisss time.”

 

    “My dear…”

 

    “She was ssso _good_ , they commended me for it.”

 

    “Locking yourself away over eighty years I think is a bit excessive.” Aziraphale reprimands weakly, his hold on Crowley tightening. “You ought to have come to see me, or you ought to have let me come in, so you could tell me all about it then… we’d have had a drink and-- and I’d have let you rest, I’d have understood if you’d only spoken to me.”

 

    Crowley shrugs.

 

    “I am sorry, dear boy, of course I am.” He adds. It hardly seems fair. He had been allowed his deal with Crowley and no ill effects. It hardly seems fair a poor woman who didn’t even know his true nature should be punished…

 

    “So am I.”

 

    “You should have just spoken with me, I wish you had spoken to me.” He squeezes him quite tight now. “Will you, next time?”

 

    “Dunno.”

 

    Aziraphale sighs. “Well, keep me in mind, at least. I’d worried you were in some trouble, you know.”

 

    “Sssorry.”

 

    “There, there… forgiven, of course, just-- don’t do it again.” He tuts.

 

    “And am I? Your favorite enemy?”

 

    “When you are my enemy…” He strokes the back of Crowley’s velvet doublet. “You are my favorite demon, let us say. Easily that.”

 

    “You believe me? That I am sorry, that I am your friend?”

 

    In the pause between question and answer, Crowley’s lips touch Aziraphale’s cheek. It is nothing approaching a kiss-- they rest, open, against the skin. Marble-cool, though his breath is warm. Aziraphale pulls away, surprised when Crowley folds gracefully to his knees again, when he takes the folds of Aziraphale’s cloak in hand, golden gaze entreating.

 

    “You believe me?” He presses.

 

    “My dear, of course.” Aziraphale touches his face, gentle. If the action of Crowley kneeling to beg the return to his good graces was a surprise, the soft kiss to his hand is a tremulous shock. If the skies had opened up and poured fire or frogs, if the earth had yawned wide and swallowed him, and shaken apart its foundations, if the stars had all winked out, he could not have felt so adrift.

 

    “Because I would prove it. I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

 

    “And I’ve forgiven you, dear, please-- please, just… get up, there’s no need to carry on so.” He stumbles back half a step, but his hand remains, held by Crowley’s own. There’s a terrible question in his eyes, there is a terrible answer to the question of how he would prove himself. “Crowley, stop it, I am not interested in punishing you.”

 

    “I am not asking to be punished. Only known.”

 

    “And I know you.” He pulls his hand free at last. “And I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

    Crowley nods. He gets to his feet, his lenses come back into place over his eyes, in the moment after something in their desperate gaze is shuttered.

 

    “No, you’re right. You’re right. It wouldn’t do any good, would it? It could only ever make things worse.”

 

    “It isn’t necessary.” He shakes his head, and dares reaching for Crowley again. He takes his hand, squeezing gently. “I know you. By what you say, by what you do, by who you are… that’s all I need. You-- you have been my favorite demon a very long time now.”

 

    He’s not sure how else to say what it is he means. What other overtures he could make. How else to explain that they have an understanding, that he doesn’t need any more than what can be given…

 

    “And you my favorite angel.” Crowley answers softly, and squeezes back. “As ever you were, my favorite angel.”

 

    “Oh… surely not.” Aziraphale shakes his head, and glows blushing, and shifts to offer his arm. “Well-- no, I suppose I must be, but still! May I escort you home, then, my dear?”

 

    “The night’s still young.” Crowley chuckles, leaning in against him. “But you may, if you’ll allow me to treat you to a drink. And I’ll tell you all about the one good deed I _did_ do for you...”

 

\---/-/---

 

    It takes two days for Crowley to convince Aziraphale that scaring the burglars who’d come to his house away from a life of crime had been a good deed as well as a selfish one, though Aziraphale maintains yet that no agent of Heaven would have gone quite so heavy on the maggots.

 

    Still, by the end of those two days, two solid days of wine and talk and teasing laughter out of each other, things feel back on an even keel.

 

    For nearly five years, Aziraphale is free to immerse himself in the culture of the city, and though it is work to avoid temptations of his own-- at least, where food is concerned-- it’s a beautiful little holiday. Crowley reports back to him with the good deeds he’ll claim credit for, as he works to make up for having stood him up when it was his turn, and in the meantime, Aziraphale has his run of all the libraries. Even if he occasionally uses his ethereal powers to gain admittance…

 

    They stroll markets and visit galleries together, as well. Crowley knows everyone who’s anyone, it seems-- at least anyone who has an art collection worth viewing. He has, apparently, worked as an artist’s model, a couple of times.

 

    Aziraphale misses his little house back in England-- Crowley misses it as well, freely admits with only a little bit of embarrassment that it had been homey and comfortable, admits at last that he had stayed there when he was waiting on Aziraphale’s return to the land of the living-- but he enjoys himself here in Florence.

 

    This! This is the life he might have had, had he been a human, a scholar. He still does do good, of course. Even with Crowley covering for him, he can’t help himself. If the opportunity arises, he helps anyone who might need him. But he could have done that as a human as well, he could have been helpful and thoughtful and diligent. He supposes in that life, he’d eat, but he tries not to dwell on it.

 

    He makes himself useful, anyhow, in libraries, when he isn’t merely absorbing all that he can. He revels in it. He spends days at a time just reading, before something might remind him of the passage of time-- when the library is not a religious one, Crowley often collects him so that he can report in, and make Aziraphale walk around in the sunlight a while breathing fresh air. When he is on hallowed ground, he has to try his best to come back to himself before too many days have passed.

 

    This time, evidently, he has returned well before he was expected to given his habits. When he admits himself into Crowley’s rooms, Crowley is just cutting into an herb tart. The aroma of it hits him, marjoram and mint, rue and sage. The sight of it, the glossy surface, the crust, the cheese custard flecked with plump raisins… and the way Crowley looks, bent over it guiltily.

 

    “I didn’t expect you back.” He says.

 

    “Don’t let me, erm, don’t let me interrupt you…”

 

    “I was going to eat it and then sleep ‘til you came ho-- I mean, I-- I’d done some divine ecstasy, and I thought I’d have a bit of a nap waiting on you to finish at the library…”

 

    “That’s fine.”

 

    “I thought by the time you did get back, you wouldn’t ever have to know…” Crowley squirms. Somehow it sounds… worse, when he tries to explain himself. “I didn’t buy it thinking to tempt you, I know what you’ve said.”

 

    It’s clear enough to him he has tempted, Aziraphale’s gaze is frozen on the slice he’s cut. Slowly, he lifts it to his lips and takes a bite. Savors it, the texture, the taste. He savors nothing so much as he savors the way Aziraphale stares, as he imagines the greater pleasure he might take in it. Imagines that the lips he pushes his next bite past are not his own, that they might share this experience the way they once did… He hums around a third bite, and it’s almost a moan, he feels a heady power at the answering sound to escape Aziraphale when he does, at the sight of his fixed gaze, his parted lips, at the overwhelming cocktail of desire and guilt coming off of an _angel_ in waves. His tongue flickers out as if he could _taste_ it. Frustrated _hedonism_ , pleasure denied. The promise of one sweet sin...

 

    “You’ve got…” Aziraphale reaches forward and then draws back, gesturing to the corner of his own mouth. “Pastry crust. I should-- leave you to it.”

 

    Crowley doesn’t stop him going, he can’t. If Aziraphale considers it sinful, he won’t tempt him to it, he’d promised as much and he means to keep it.

 

    He enjoys the rest of the tart less than he’d anticipated, but at least having finished it he feels like he could sleep off the encounter. When Aziraphale comes back from his latest reading binge, when Crowley emerges from his post-meal slumber, they’ll have other things on their minds. He just needs to dream about anything other than food and Aziraphale.

 

    Mostly, he dreams about food. And Aziraphale.

 

    “I think it’s time for me to move on.” Aziraphale announces to him, when they do meet again, and while it’s not news he receives happily, he can’t say it’s a surprise.

 

    “Starting to feel too idle here?”

 

    “Yes, something like. And… I’ve read everything, or near enough. And I really should work again. Spread things around. I appreciate your trying to make up for lost time, but it’s too many shifts in a row, isn’t it?”

 

    “Haven’t had to travel far. Everyone wants to come through here, it works out.”

 

    “Still. Best we… best we move on, yes. I-- I’ve enjoyed Florence immensely but I’m ready for… different climates. The Rhineland, maybe. Holy Roman Empire.”

 

    “Spain.” Crowley nods. “Haven’t done Spain in an age. Come and meet me there when you’re ready, drinks will be on me.”

 

    Aziraphale’s smile is cautious for a long moment, and then achingly warm. It’s a ray of sunshine, he wants to stretch out under it for hours.

 

    “Drinks on you, I’ll hold you to that. Crowley… I’ll see you then.”

 

    “See you, angel. Take care.”

 

    “I’m sure I hardly need worry. But you as well.”

 

    “Yeah, well… if I’m not there to look out for you.”

 

    “ _You_ look out for _me_? Oh, that’s hardly how I remember it the last time.”

 

    “Exactly, so I owe you.” He grins, giving a wave before sauntering off through the crowd. “Ciao.”

 

    Aziraphale looks down, and tries to contain his bursting smile.

 

    “Ciao.” He whispers, for no one’s real benefit but his own.

 


	14. Taking In All This Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale's been having a lovely time.
> 
> Crowley... hasn't.

    Aziraphale couldn’t be more thrilled with his choice. He’d done some roaming, and then no sooner had he arrived in Mainz, but he discovered the press. Moveable type! Now, the work of long nights spent fighting against tired eyes and trembling hands could be accomplished with no more effort than it took to make olive oil or wine! Of course there was the loss of that certain personal touch, but he’d seen the toll that the work of copying books could take. Not just the strained vision, but headaches with it. Not just a hand that trembled at the end of a long day, but one which after years became a gnarled claw, with pain that ran all the way from wrist to elbow. Hunched posture, as well. And it was so time-consuming. It was worthy work, of course, which Aziraphale had loved, and much loved the result of, but if pages could be quickly and easily printed like so, it meant so many hours in the day to devote to other good works, to caring for the poor and the sick, dealing with parishoners in need of guidance… it meant _freedom_ to do more.

 

    He spends thirty years in Mainz just watching it develop, drinking it all in, watching the trial and error blossom into glorious success, seeing other presses made and shipped to other cities… he buys himself a copy of everything he sees printed, though he no longer has any place to keep them but his rented room, must carry it all with him when he goes…

 

    It’s then that he remembers poor Crowley, who must be waiting for him, as he’s not shown up himself. When he goes, which he must do, to meet with Crowley… Well, it’s only been thirty years longer than he meant for his travels to go, which for them is not so long at all. A third the time Crowley last stood him up!

 

    It’s a bit cumbersome, to fly with luggage-- a large bag with two sets of clothes and more than a dozen books-- but he holds it as close to his body as he can and he sweeps over Spain, going from city to city, circling until he’s sure Crowley isn’t there at all before moving on. He lands a couple of times, to give himself a rest, to listen to news and gossip in hopes of hearing which city might have something that would draw Crowley’s attention-- where the newest amusements or the finest foods and wines might be found.

 

    He wishes that were it.

 

    He finds him in Toledo, his essence a beacon. He lands on a balcony and raps at the shutters, until a very bleary-eyed demon opens them to him.

 

    “‘Zir’phale.” He sways on his feet, expression unchanging. “Has it been long?”

 

    “Too long.” Aziraphale sniffs. The number of empty wine bottles… Crowley might have been incoherent with drink for a _week_ , and that’s if he’d not used his occult abilities to refill any of them. “Evidently. Someone ought to have been here to save you from yourself.”

 

    “Sod off.” He snarls, but it’s half-hearted. “If you’re just here to lecture, you can, you can-- you can _go_ , I don’t need your sssanctimony. I’ve had _enough_.”

 

    “Are you trying to drink your vessel to death?”

 

    “I’ve had _enough_.” He repeats. “We’re-- full up on _righteousnesss_ here, so you can-- you can-- you can go. Hm, marvelous echo in here, isn’t there?”

 

    “Can you sober up so that we can _talk_?”

 

    “ _No_.”

 

    He wouldn’t mind the drunk act if he were there with him, he supposes. But Crowley isn’t his usual drunk, he’s… whatever he is, Aziraphale doesn’t like it. And if he were to join him, they’d never really get anywhere.

 

    “Well it’s very difficult with you like this, I must say. And here I thought we might have a pleasant reunion, I’d brought y--”

 

    “A pleasant reunion! A pleasant-- Oh, you thought?” Crowley hurls one of his empty bottles at the wall-- away from Aziraphale, well away from him.

 

    “You’re being very unlike yourself.” Aziraphale sniffs, hurt. Not frightened-- Crowley could have thrown it at him, and it’s not as though he was likely to do him any harm if he had, but even in this state, he’d made the choice not to do that. But hurt. He’d bought him a book back in Mainz, a second copy of one of the early non-religious volumes he’d seen printed, and he’d thought Crowley might be excited by the new technology at least, even if the book itself meant little to him. He always is tickled by innovation. And he’d arrived to this mess, to Crowley’s temper tantrum, and he hadn’t made any judgments or anything, he’d only wanted to express his concern, and Crowley, who had let him in after all when he might have said ‘this is a bad time and could you come back tomorrow’, has been very rude to him!

 

    “Everything’s falling apart, so excuse me. Excuse me! Aren’t they your people? Aren’t you the one who should be protecting them?” He shouts. “It’s all coming apart and where have _you_ been? Off _doing your job_ somewhere nice? Don’t they ever send you any helpful suggestions, from Upstairs? Don’t they ever tell you where the action is? People are _suffering_ , Aziraphale!”

 

    “I know.” He says softly.

 

    “No, you don’t.” Crowley sneers at him. It’s an ugly look, disdainful, and under that the snarl of a wounded, cornered beast. “You don’t know the _meaning_ of the word, you never have.”

 

    Aziraphale sets his bag down pointedly, and draws himself up to his vessel’s full height-- if not the full height he would be capable of achieving, if he so wished it. He hides his hurt, as best he can, but there’s a flash of it before he can call upon a more properly angelic countenance.

 

    “I know suffering.” He says. Head up, shoulders down, hands folded politely when they want to grab at Crowley and shake him. “I allowed you to tell me I couldn’t understand once before, because you couldn’t have known… but I feel what they feel. I feel all that they feel, and I am forbidden from simply sweeping in and _fixing_ it. When you decided to sleep through the plague, I felt fear and pain in every city, in every village. And speaking of plagues! I have felt the grief of every mother whose child has been taken from her, Crowley. Whose happy, laughing ten year old boy of yesterday failed to wake one morning, whose infant cried out and then stopped. The panic, the self-recrimination, and the crushing _sadness_ of it. Here, now, standing in your rooms, I can feel an indescribable _sorrow_ , and there is nothing I am permitted to do about it, because to fix _this_? It’s too big.”

 

    Crowley gawps at him. He sways on his feet once more, and he says nothing.

 

    “You really are very cruel sometimes.” Aziraphale blinks rapidly, turning away. “Just when I think it might be good of you to care for their suffering, just when I think it might be some sign of your former nature, if you can feel it, too, you go and say such a thing to me. And maybe I wouldn’t mind so much if we had never been-- But I unburdened myself to you, once. It was a mistake to, I see that now. Why should I bother telling you of my sorrows, you clearly didn’t listen, or if you did, it hardly matters, for you to stand here and discount my very ability to feel pain.”

 

    “Oh-- oh, nice. No, no-- No, how dare _you_?” Crowley shakes his head, stumbling around to try and put himself in front of Aziraphale again. “Don’t make this about me _caring_ , because I don’t.”

 

    “No?”

 

    “No. I’m a demon, remember? I’m only here on this earth to damn as many souls as I can. That’s an eternity of torture, I’m not-- I’m not all soft about people. I’m just squeamish about watching it, which is why I stay up top and do the tempting, and let other people do the tormenting, that’s all. I’m not _like_ you. I haven’t got your blessed empathy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

 

    “I’m not thinking you have much empathy at the moment, no. Let that be a weight off your mind.”

 

    “Well _good_. Because I haven’t!”

 

    “No, if you did, you’d have learned to shield yourself by now.”

 

    “I haven’t. Is that what you do? Shield yourself, so you don’t have to feel it?” Another sneer.

 

    “No. I still feel it. I shield myself so that it doesn’t destroy me. So that I can still work. If I let myself feel it all at full force, so many souls with so many troubles, I would never be able to get anything done. I’d go mad from it. But I still do feel it.”

 

    He is better at it than he once was, though he is still learning, working on it. He can look for specific feelings, though he might not get what he seeks. He can open himself to only one or two people’s full feeling at a time, though it is imperfect. Sometimes too much floods in when he relaxes the barriers around himself. He doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like to think he is deadening himself to the pains of his charges, but he would be a useless mess if he just felt it all always, full strength. He does what he must. For a brief moment he wondered if Crowley might understand that, but it seems he doesn’t.

 

    It may yet be a sign of some goodness in him, that Crowley has no stomach for torture, though why he won’t now just admit to liking people, Aziraphale doesn’t know. He’s spoken of liking people before, why now this attitude?

 

    “Been commended.” Crowley says at last, picking through his wine bottles until he finds one with a long swig left in it. “You can go on about empathy much as you like, but you didn’t get the credit for it all.”

 

    “They’re doing it in our name, you idiot!” He snaps. “And I can’t fix it for you, all right? I can’t. I didn’t know it would be like this, when I came to see you, but when I saw how things were, I thought at least… I thought when we saw each other, it would be better somehow. I thought seeing you would be a balm, I don’t know why. I have precious little reason to believe it, you’ve only ever-- you’ve only broken promises and called _me_ unfeeling, and-- dear, but I keep falling for it, don’t I?”

 

    “Aziraphale--” He staggers forward.

 

    “No, don’t. Don’t. I will accept a sober apology in a week’s time. If you are not sober in a week’s time, then… then I’m not sure what we shall have to say to each other, I’m really not.”

 

    “Don’t go. I’ll sober up, all right? Just-- don’t leave it like this.”

 

    Aziraphale straightens, from where he’d stooped to reach for his bag again, and folds his arms in a manner which says ‘I’m waiting’ very clearly. Crowley forces the alcohol from his system, and promptly collapses.

 

    When he comes to, he’s in his bed, and Aziraphale is sitting up over him-- though the moment he sees Crowley is conscious, his worried expression becomes a hard, serious look, which he aims at the wall with a huff.

 

    “Never been too sober to stay conscious before.” Crowley jokes. Aziraphale does not even hint at a smile. “Shock of it, I expect. Spent a week avoiding sober. About a week. How long have I been, erm…?”

 

    “Three days. I’m not here to listen to you talk about how drunk you’ve been.”

 

    “No. No, suppose not. Aziraphale… I’m sorry.”

 

    “Oh, so am I!” Aziraphale turns back to him, with all the soft caring Crowley has come to anticipate from the angel. And then he pulls himself back, to that stony frown, that lack of eye contact. “I mean… do you even know what it is you’re sorry for, or are you only sorry because I was cross?”

 

    “For saying you didn’t… you didn’t understand suffering. I shouldn’t have done.” Crowley reaches for his hand. Aziraphale may frown and look away, but when Crowley’s hand steals into his own, he squeezes it warmly. “You’re right, it was… cold of me, when we’ve been open with each other about things. I knew you’d lost someone important to you, I shouldn’t have said you never suffered, just because you never-- Things I’ve been through, it’s just… a different kind of suffering.”

 

    “Thank you. I’m sorry for being so short with you, when you were in no fit state for it… I should have seen you weren’t-- I should have arranged to discuss things later right at the start, and we might not have fought. You just… you hurt me sometimes, Crowley. But it doesn’t give me license to hurt you.”

 

    “Yeah, well. Demons don’t-- you know, we don’t… We’re not all emotional about things like that.” He sniffs. “So no harm done.”

 

    “Liar.”

 

    “Comes with the territory.”

 

    “I mean… you do have feelings, don’t you? I know you do.” Aziraphale ventures, though there’s a cold fear in the pit of his stomach at pushing the question so far. “You’re not like what they say-- not really.”

 

    “No. No, not-- I mean I feel things, but I don’t have… not like… soft feelings.”

 

    “You really don’t love them, people?” He frowns. Yes, he knows-- he’s been told-- that demons don’t, and can’t, and yet Crowley is so upset when people are hurt, when the world is unjust… mustn’t he love them, then?

 

    “I don’t love anyone.” Crowley lies, eyes closing. “Not since Before. Works out great for me.”

 

    “Seems very sad, actually.”

 

    “No. Sad would be if I loved, the way I did in-- up there. Sad would be holding onto an old love, knowing now I’m a demon, I can’t _be_ loved. Sad… I’m not sad. I’m just free.”

 

    “I see. Well… if you’re happy.”

 

    “I am. I’m very happy being a demon. Much better as a demon than I ever was as an angel. I was a rubbish angel.”

 

    Aziraphale stands. Something lands on the bed. Crowley opens his eyes to find a book.

 

    He opens it, curious. He can’t read the language, though certain words leap out at him.

 

    “This is the most precise writing I’ve ever seen.” He whistles. “There’s no difference at all between the letters.”

 

    “It’s not hand-written. It’s _stamped_. Do you know how they do it?”

 

    That has his interest. He looks up. “How?”

 

    “The letters all fit together and move about in a tray, and you can use them to make up a page to say anything you like. And you ink them just like a stamp, and you put the paper in, and it’s like a wine press, only it stamps out an entire page of the book at once. Isn’t it wonderful? I thought-- I don’t know if the book-- But I thought you’d find it interesting, or…”

 

    “I do. This is for me?”

 

    Aziraphale nods. Crowley loves him so much it hurts.


	15. What My Heart Would Say If It Only Knew How

    They work out a timeline for the next two years, and agree to meet up in Florence to greet the new century together. Aziraphale likes the idea. Maybe they don’t need to greet every new year together, but centuries. It would be nice to do centuries.

 

    He keeps track of his deeds, so that when they meet, they can trade accounts of what they ought to have done, and Crowley leads him to a little place, a set of rooms he’s renting, a balcony with a little tree in a large planter, with two chairs and a table just big enough to hold their wine, as well as a dish of olives and half a loaf of bread.

 

    “I can clear that away.” Crowley says quickly. “I was eating earlier. Turns out I’m not actually fond of olives, just… used to them. Thousands of years on olives, I never really asked myself if I liked them. Well… not that I need to eat.”

 

    “I haven’t had them in ages. Of course, I-- I don’t…” Aziraphale looks out over the city. Lights in windows here and there, and lanterns on boats along the river. Crowley’s balcony comes out practically over the water, no denying it’s a beautiful view.

 

    “Yeah, I-- I should have gotten rid of it before. I’ll toss those.”

 

    “Toss them?”

 

    “Well I’m not going to eat the rest of them. I don’t need to eat anything I don’t enjoy.” Crowley shrugs.

 

    “Oh. Well-- if you’re-- I mean, I shouldn’t let them go to _waste_ …” He frowns, glancing at the dish again. “It’s only olives, I can’t recall ever having an issue with olives, and I’m sure I’ve eaten them before.”

 

    “I’ve liked that sort of a-- sort of a tapenade, but I just don’t like them on their own. Maybe-- maybe you’d be fine. They’re just sort of… you know, there’s nothing much _to_ it. Maybe you’d be fine.” Crowley says, and he can feel the way his interest flares, like something has been jerked up from the pit of his stomach and into his chest, fluttering and hot, rearranging everything inside him.

 

    Even with his dark glasses in place, the intensity of the way he looks at Aziraphale now is palpable, the way he leans in…

 

    “When you look at me like that, I feel as if it mustn’t be fine at all.” Aziraphale pouts, shifting in his seat. “You make me think it must be very wicked of me, when you look at me like that.”

 

    “Oh.” Crowley turns away, insides roiling all over again. At least Aziraphale only thinks it might be an issue of his temptation, and not Crowley’s own… “No, no, of course not. I won’t look. I won’t watch you, if you-- if you want to. I mean… one olive is so small, you-- you’d know from one if it was too… if you can’t finish them, if you don’t want to, then I’ll go and get rid of the rest right away. And you won’t have to be tempted, if they’re too tempting. But… this way you’d know, if you can eat at all. They’re not that great, maybe you’ll be fine.”

 

    “You keep saying that.” Aziraphale frets, but Crowley turns the rest of the way around, so his back is to him, and it feels a little less dangerous that way.

 

    He takes one, and turns slightly away, looking out over the water. One olive. If he feels overcome with that feeling, he’ll just tell Crowley to take them away from him, and Crowley will. But Crowley won’t watch him, or judge him, it’s… it’s safe. An experiment. Aziraphale closes his eyes, takes a deep breath he doesn’t need, and pops the olive into his mouth.

 

    It’s… an olive. He chews very carefully, until he spits the pit neatly into the palm of his hand. He continues to chew carefully just because he wants to be careful, because he’s used to being so overwhelmed by food. But this is just… an olive. He hasn’t eaten one in a while, he doesn’t recall disliking them, but it’s true they’ve never been… they weren’t like the plums or the honey, and certainly not like the chicken. With a thoughtful hum, he reaches back over to the dish and takes another.

 

    Crowley doesn’t turn to look. He grips at his own thighs and stares out at the river, and listens. Listens to the delicate sounds. He’s never enjoyed the sound of chewing before, except for when he’d been feeding Aziraphale chicken, and it had been part of the experience. But then, Aziraphale chews with a sort of inhuman patience, which is very different from how he’d been with the chicken, but much more polite, he supposes. There are no little sounds of enjoyment, he longs for anything, a moan, a sigh, but it’s just… It’s deliberate and quiet, passionless. Still, he strains for the soft sounds that there are. He listens as one by one the olives are consumed, and the pits dropped back into the dish.

 

    It shouldn’t affect him. It’s not _pleasure_ , it’s certainly not _sinful_. That’s what he’d responded to before, he’d responded to Aziraphale taking earthly pleasure in something, and the fact he’d felt guilty about it and enjoyed it anyway, though if it had really been wrong, Crowley would have known it. And yet just knowing he’s sitting there eating means _something_. It… it’s the idea of it, he guesses, the mental image, the memories of feeding each other.

 

    And then, as he’s heard the last pit hit the dish, as he’s giving himself just a moment before turning, to forget all those times before and how it had felt, he hears the tearing of bread, the very, very, very soft hum before he even begins chewing.

 

    _Bread_. It had been so long, he’d held out so long, but it was sitting right there, and the olives had been so unsatisfying. Not bad, but on their own, they hadn’t…

 

    They hadn’t done anything to him. And so, he’d allowed himself to hope that maybe this time, the bread would be safe.

 

    It’s _good_ bread, maybe better than the last time he’d eaten, but a bit stale from sitting out half-eaten since whenever Crowley had been nibbling. It’s still good, good enough. It’s been so _long_ … It’s enough to enjoy, but he doesn’t feel _gluttonous._ He tears off a slightly overlarge bite, and it’s _satisfying_ , maybe more than that and he would feel the urge… but he can control himself, it’s fine. He just doesn’t go back to it, after that bite, the one that verges on too good.

 

    “All right?” Crowley asks, after a moment, his voice tight.

 

    “Yes. I think so.” Aziraphale turns back to him. “Er-- I’ll stop here, but-- yes. You were right, it was-- it was perfectly safe. Thank you.”

 

    “My pleasure.” Crowley turns as well. He wraps the rest of the bread in the linen cloth it had been set out on, moving to tuck it back in his little kitchen, and to fetch glasses for the wine. “Are we getting close to the new century?”

 

    “We’ve got time left to wait. But the stars are out now. Makes the waiting sweeter.” He says. The clouds have rolled away, and the sky is full and glittering, the moon full and golden… “And the moon. Prettiest it’s been in a while.”

 

    “All right, then.” Crowley smiles, rejoining him. He picks up the dish of olive pits. “You still don’t know how to have any fun.”

 

    “I beg your pardon?”

 

    “Look.” He pops one into his mouth, despite Aziraphale’s wordless protest, leaning over the railing of his balcony to spit it out towards the river. His inhuman night vision allows him to track its arc down to the water, though it’s not much of a splash even from this height. Nothing they can hear. Still, he feels a sense of satisfaction.

 

    “That was in my _mouth_ , Crowley.” Aziraphale frowns.

 

    “So?” He holds the dish out, giving it a little shake. “Come on.”

 

    “I don’t see how this is _fun_.”

 

    “Come on.” Crowley presses, and after a long moment of looking between him and the dish, Aziraphale takes one and spits it out over the railing.

 

    It is, like much of what Aziraphale does, rather too delicate.

 

    “You missed.” Crowley sighs. “You’ve got to really _spit_ it.”

 

    “Well I don’t normally spit things! Oh, I should go down and do something about it…”

 

    “It’s an olive pit, it’s not going to hurt anyone. Here, try again.”

 

    Aziraphale does.

 

    “Got it!” Crowley cheers, and in spite of himself, Aziraphale smiles, clapping his hands together just twice, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

 

    “Did I?”

 

    “Yeah. Go on, one more.” He holds the dish out, and they each take another, leaning out at the same time. Crowley beats Aziraphale for distance, but he politely declines to brag, for once. He can’t quite find it in him, when Aziraphale is laughing softly to himself at his side. “See? Fun.”

 

    “It’s a very odd hobby you have, dear boy, this… flinging and spitting of pits into the water.” Aziraphale says, but he doesn’t say it isn’t fun.

 

    “Sometimes, fun is just doing something very odd that doesn’t make any sense, because you can.” He shrugs. “Don’t you ever do something just because you can?”

 

    Aziraphale thinks about kissing him, then, though he doesn’t know why. He has no reason to. Because he could, he supposes, standing so close to him on the balcony. Perhaps he is as susceptible as any human, to a lovely full moon overhead, but it’s only Crowley. It’s… it’s ridiculous to consider! For one thing, Crowley’s a demon, he wouldn’t… he wouldn’t want to, would he? He’d said himself he didn’t do ‘soft feelings’, and Aziraphale had never known him to enjoy seducing mortals, so it’s difficult to see what the draw would be for either of them.

 

    It’s not that there’s anyone else Aziraphale could imagine kissing instead, it’s that he doesn’t kiss. A cheek in greeting, certainly, or a hand, but not a mouth. Certainly not a human being. Not any other angels, not since…

 

    That was a very long time ago.

 

    Anyway, they hadn’t ever kissed. He’ll never know if he was loved as keenly as he’d loved… before they ever had the chance, the war…

 

    He doesn’t suppose he’ll ever know that particular intimacy. And yet… he and Crowley have… they’ve shared their essences with each other, even if it was very different from Before. So if he were going to, with anyone, perhaps it ought to be Crowley, because he’s a friend, because Aziraphale does trust him. For all the times he’s burned himself doing it, he trusts Crowley, and he believes Crowley trusts him as well. It’s just a silly thing to think of doing at all.

 

    Evidently he takes long enough not making any reply-- Crowley’s teasing, fond smile falls away, and he turns back towards the river with a sigh.

 

    “Of course not.” He says. “You don’t act on impulse.”

 

    “No, I don’t.” Aziraphale agrees. “It’s a dangerous thing for an angel, impulses. If you act on the wrong one, you could-- They don’t-- No, I’ve never done something just because I can.”

 

    Impulses like bringing a demon into his temporary dwelling before the flood, or kissing his forehead in relief and gratitude, or giving him his cloak, or feeding him by hand for no reason but that he could, or accepting a sweet, or running off to an island with him, or making a deal no angel should make, or blessing a watering can full of water to kill a different demon, or eating nearly half a chicken in a frenzy, or sharing his deepest secrets, or buying a book for a friend he calls an enemy still…

 

    No. A _good angel_ is not a creature of impulse.

 

    “Nearly a new century.” He says, when Crowley goes so long saying nothing at all.

 

    “Fifteen hundred.” Crowley pours the wine, handing him a glass. “Silly to imagine it will be so different from last year, that’s never how these things work, but… well, still. There will be a lot of change over the next hundred.”

 

    “There nearly always is. It seems it comes faster and faster nowadays.” He toys with the stem of the glass a bit, though he’s still careful not to spill the wine even as he fidgets. “We should-- We should do this, I was thinking.”

 

    “Do what?”

 

    “We should… mark the centuries passing.”

 

    “What, every century? Have a drink and see the new one roll in?”

 

    “Yes.” He nods, only daring glances over to Crowley, uncertain.

 

    “I’d like that.” Crowley smiles, and Aziraphale feels a great weight lift-- no, evaporate from him! They could do this… and why not? Why shouldn’t two cordial, civil enemies greet each new century together, when they’re the only two beings on earth who see each new century turn over. “To fifteen hundred.”

 

    “To fifteen hundred.” Aziraphale beams, meeting Crowley halfway, glasses clinking gently together.

 

    “Will you be in town long?”

 

    “No… I haven’t arranged to stay anywhere, I thought I’d just go…”

 

    “You just got into town. Stay here the rest of the night, rest up before you go.”

 

    “I don’t need-- Well. It wouldn’t hurt. Thank you. I’ll let you know when I head out… and then I’m sure I won’t be away very long.”

 

    “Back to work so soon?”

 

    “I don’t know. To see what a new century looks like, here and there. And of course to do whatever I must, in my role… but I won’t be too long, if I’ll find you here?”

 

    “Right here, for the foreseeable future.”

 

    “Well. Lovely.”

 

    “Just let yourself in if I’m not here to. If you hear snoring, give it a couple days and then prod me. You know how it is.”

 

    “I’m sure I couldn’t. But I might come and wait on your balcony at any rate… I don’t see why I couldn’t do that.”

 

    “All right.” Crowley leans against the railing, and leans in towards Aziraphale. “But let yourself in if the weather’s lousy when you come.”

 

    “Very well. If the weather is lousy.”

 

    Crowley suspects that Aziraphale would sit out in the rain for days at a time for propriety’s sake, but then, they’ve always had different ideas about what weather was and wasn’t unbearable.

 

    “Perfect night for seeing the new century in.” He shuffles a little nearer. He’s bundled up, but Aziraphale gives off warmth. He doesn’t press up close like he wants, but he’s sensitive to it, he can still sense it a little, if he’s near.

 

    “Oh, yes.” Aziraphale sighs, and leans in a little as well. “Yes, beautiful night. The moon and all. Lovely color on the moon.”

 

    “If you say so, ‘s just yellow to me.”

 

    “It’s _gold_.” Aziraphale says, and when Crowley just shrugs, he sniffs. “It’s my favorite color, actually. Although-- I don’t like to have favorites, but-- but it _is_ , if you must know.”

 

    “How very _celestial_ of you. Let me guess, your second favorite color is blue?”

 

    “So what if it is?”

 

    “Predictable. So angelic.”

 

    “And you don’t have a penchant for black?”

 

    “It’s not my _favorite_. I just look good in it.” Crowley preens a little, though the way he’s huddled within his cape takes away from it a bit.

 

    “What is your favorite?” Aziraphale asks, and he’s not snippy anymore, just openly curious.

 

    “Green.” He says, looking out at the reflection of the moon on the river. He hadn’t liked being green, in the garden. He’d felt rather ugly, next to all the lush plant green, in his rather sickly shade of it. Even then, black had suited him much better.

 

    “Oh.” Aziraphale’s voice is faraway-soft. “If I had a third favorite, I think it would be green.”

 

    “Not white?” Crowley teases, though there’s not much spirit in it.

 

    “No. I like green very much. Anyhow, white’s not really a color. It’s very, you know…”

 

    “In line with the company look?”

 

    “Yes. Anyway, what’s your third favorite? Red, is it?”

 

    “No, no, not-- I mean, just for the look.” He laughs. “Maybe blue, actually. I don’t really know. I never thought about a third. Maybe blue. I mean… don’t dislike red at all. But… maybe it’s blue. Maybe it’s white.”

 

    “It isn’t.” Aziraphale can’t quite help grinning. He hadn’t felt like grinning a moment ago, and now he does. It’s all he can do. “It isn’t ever white. Even I don’t think white’s anything special.”

 

    “Maybe. I’ll have to think about it.”

 

    “Silver. You like silver. Or-- you wear a lot of it.”

 

    “Silver, maybe, then. Or blue. Dunno. I’ll let you know, if it ever matters.”

 

    “When you know, it will matter.” Aziraphale insists. “I-- The things you like… matter to me. I mean, don’t-- Well-- I thought--”

 

    He thinks of that time after Alexandria, of a poem written on the wall of a barn, and a bottle of wine. How can Crowley say he hasn’t any soft feelings, when he had thought of what Aziraphale liked, when it had mattered to him then, when he had done all that he’d done?

 

    “Then I’ll let you know if I ever pick one. And I’ll remember yours.”

 

    “All right.”

 

\---/-/---

 

    In Osaka, Aziraphale allows himself another experiment in eating. Namanare doesn’t look too exciting, shouldn’t inflame his senses.

 

    Well… of course, he’d assumed it was the same all the way through at first. Namanare isn’t quite perfect, perhaps, but it’s as close as he could ask it to be. He enjoys it-- he is, perhaps, a little more gluttonous than is strictly angelic-- but he isn’t driven wild. He isn’t an _animal_ about it.

 

    It’s similar to something Crowley had told him about, but that was hundreds of years back, it was some sort of fermented dish, and he hadn’t wanted to hear about it at the time.

 

    How soon, he wonders, is too soon to return to Florence? And why does the thought of discussing his meal still fill him with some trepidation, when he’d been just fine eating it?

 

    He returns to Italy, to Cesena, and tries not to think about why he should be so eager and yet so unready.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “I have an appointment, you know.”

 

    Crowley puts on his most charming grin. He’s not _quite_ Leonardo’s type, but the charm still does work. Mostly. “Oh, but talking to me is so much more interesting than any old appointment, isn’t it?”

 

    “Signor Raphaelli is a very welcome appointment. Unlike some young men, he doesn’t keep me from my paying work.”

 

    “You love to be distracted from your work.”

 

    “But I shouldn’t, and you should not encourage me.”

 

    “Are you going to put in eyebrows?” He asks, leaning over the sketch in progress.

 

    “I don’t know, what do you think?” Leonardo rolls his eyes. “I’m working out the expression. She’s going to have eyebrows, I wasn’t happy with them…”

 

    “So who’s this appointment, anyway, that he’s so special?”

 

    “I met him last year. He’s like you.”

 

    “There are no men like me.” Crowley turns his grin back up.

 

    “Knowledgeable about art, a pain in the neck, but… sometimes, very good to talk to.” Leonardo says, pointedly ignoring Crowley’s scoffing. “Sometimes. When he isn’t trying to give me notes on a fresco I finished five years ago.”

 

    But Crowley isn’t listening anymore, he’s at the window, where a private breeze has carried an old familiar taste through the air. He’ll have an appointment of his own soon… that’s worth tearing himself from the workshop for. He ought to pick out a nice wine, he ought…

 

    He ought to buy olives, maybe? He ought to do something. Aziraphale! Back already, it’s only been a few years, not even five. Had he missed him so quickly?

 

    A knock pulls him from his thoughts, he turns to go, to leave Leonardo to his appointment, and he sees…

 

    “Alphonso Raphaelli, may I present Antonio--”

 

    “We’ve met.” Aziraphale says.

 

    “Oh, _Alphonso_ Raphaelli.” Crowley steps closer, taking in Aziraphale’s current look, not so different at all from when last he’d seen him. “I didn’t realize, yes, of course we’ve met. Here I thought I would be your first appointment in town.”

 

    “Oh-- er-- I thought perhaps in the evening, I might… After all, you and I shall have all the time in the world for-- for catching up.”

 

    Aziraphale doesn’t look any more Italian than he had the last time they’d been in Florence together-- the last two times. But then, he supposes he doesn’t look any less Italian, either. He just sort of looks… like himself, which is to say, he rarely seems to quite belong in both the time and the place he’s at.

 

    “Machines again?” Aziraphale turns towards some sketches, hastily changing the subject.

 

    “You two… You think I should give up my engineering and focus on art alone. You think that engineering is the future and I should focus on my machines… If I have an angel in one ear and a devil in the other, I only wish I knew which was which.”

 

    Aziraphale opens his mouth, and snaps it shut again, and Crowley grins, slipping an arm around his shoulders.

 

    “Oh, isn’t it obvious? He’s the angel, of course.”

 

    “You think?” Leonardo smiles.

 

    “Look at his face! An angel’s face if I ever saw one. You should have him sit for one of those religious pieces.”

 

    “Oh, hush, you.”

 

    “So you’re saying I should ignore all your advice.”

 

    “It isn’t really so simple.” Aziraphale sighs. “Of course I don’t mean to say you should give up something you’re passionate about, not entirely. Only that you can’t leave art for it.”

 

    “Because my gift belongs to the world?”

 

    “Because your gift, dear boy, pays the bills. I wouldn’t see you starve because there’s more market for portraits than contraptions.”

 

    “And I wouldn’t see you waste your gifts, just because I think you should keep your mind on innovation.” Crowley admits, leaving Aziraphale’s side to return to the sketch he’d admired earlier.

 

    “I told you you were alike.”

 

    “We’re nothing alike.” Crowley protests with a snort. He looks over towards Aziraphale, a smile tugging at his lips. “Would that we were, it would improve me.”

 

    “You tease me.”

  
    “Come call on me tonight. I’ll have a good bottle of wine waiting for you.” He says, passing him on his way out, and leaning in close. “ _Alphonso_.”


	16. Just Wait 'Til I Get Myself Straight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And another hundred years goes by... bringing with it new things, and familiar ones.

    When Aziraphale walks into the tavern, Crowley is all but pinned between two men, and if it weren’t for the way he _laughs_ , he would rush to his rescue.

 

    “I don’t know, what will _you_ do for me, if I choose you?” He asks playfully, shoving one a little further away, allowing the other to press closer.

 

    His stomach feels small. He’s never witnessed this-- Lust. The inspiring thereof. Of course it’s part of the job description for a demon, silly of him to think… whatever he’d thought.

 

    It is _distasteful_ \-- it is his own duty to thwart, isn’t it? And yet… they had their Arrangement. He wasn’t to interfere when Crowley was working, Crowley wasn’t to interfere with him. Minor temptations… happen, sometimes. Even when they’re in the same place.

 

    He strides up to the table Crowley is sprawled on-- leaning back against one man now, his boot flat against the other’s chest and his leg folded in, the two teasing him… the one at his back whispers in his ear, the other leans forward against his bracing foot, laughing, making ridiculous promises.

 

    “Is it _wise_ to carry on this way in public?” Aziraphale coughs, and Crowley looks up at him. For a moment, the four of them are a frozen tableau.

 

    “We haven’t done anything.” Crowley shrugs.

 

    “Yet.” One of the men grins.

 

    Crowley removes his boot from said man’s chest, and he quickly moves himself close again. It had all been a bit of fun, up until Aziraphale came in, and now Crowley doesn’t like it anymore, not really. He doesn’t like the way Aziraphale regards the three of them… he can’t tell what he thinks of it, but he’s unhappy, that much is clear.

 

    “I’m a better kisser than he is.” Will whispers, ignoring Aziraphale entirely-- which he doesn’t like, that isn’t right, but what is right, now?

 

    “How do you know? Have you kissed him? Why don’t you kiss each other while I watch, and then you can tell me about what’s good?” Crowley challenges, one hand caressing each man’s jaw, drawing them in.

 

    There’s a moment of uncertainty, before they lock lips from opposite sides of his shoulder, and the little crowd of like-minded persons who’d crowded around them cheer a bit at that, but Crowley takes the opportunity to slither out from between them. They don’t actually notice, which… he’s a bit miffed, considering. He’d put in work, aged himself down a little from his prior goal of roughly twenty-seven, prettied himself up, _really_ flirted. Made quite a few near-promises he had no intention of honoring, and one or two he could have stood to follow through on if it couldn’t be helped, but he’d wanted the attention! Now, they’re lost in each other, and it’s his own fault for ramping up the Lust and aiming them at each other, but…

 

    But he couldn’t carry on with it with Aziraphale _watching_. He feels bad enough promising his kisses to other lips, when he’s loved him, but it’s not as if they could ever… It’s not as if it matters, so he might as well get over it, do his job, and get something out of it for himself!

 

    “You gentlemen might prefer to engage in this activity upstairs.” Aziraphale pipes up, when the kissing doesn’t peter out, and a room key materializes in his hand to be pressed upon the pair. “I believe the third room on the right will suit your purposes. Just… before any unfriendly eyes should catch you. Go on.”

 

    Another moment of uncertainty, a questioning shrug and an answering one, and they both manage to disappear right before an officer of the law comes in.

 

    “Good timing, angel. Ahh, last I’ll see of those two, I suppose.” Crowley sighs. “Oh well. I’d planned on stringing them along a little longer if I could, but you can only play that game for so long. Still, I thought I’d get something out of it. Play written about me. A good poem.”

 

    “You care about poetry now? You always make fun.” Aziraphale sniffs-- and yet… for all that he does have to argue every poem, he’s always asked to be read to… and he’d memorized much of one of them, and for a long time...

 

    “Well… I care if it’s about me. I mean, it’d be good if it was about _me_. Lots of good imagery you could get out of all this.” He gestures to himself.

 

    He’s not wrong. His hair had been dark the last time they’d seen each other-- had been a beautiful brown for a while, and then back to ink-black, but now… Now it’s bright, radiant. Not just highlights that the sun pulls from darker hair, like he’d had so long ago, but red-gold curls that frame a face so young and beautiful…

 

    It’s still Crowley. It’s still sharp and angular, he still has to shield his eyes from people. But the hair lends a softness, an… angelic-ness, if you asked a human, though to Aziraphale, he looks far more human than angel, and better for it. His lips are much fuller than usual, it seems, though it’s not saying all that much. They’re always thin, though finely-carved.

 

    “Why are you so… pretty?” Aziraphale grouses.

 

    “It’s the type they like.” He shrugs. “Creative types. Artists, writers… I’ve got to be in vogue, you know, if I want to be immortalized.”

 

    “You are immortal.”

 

    “Yes. So I’d like to have… keepsakes. A glowing description, or a picture. Show what I was like at this time. Where I was, how I looked. We… we have such long lives--”

 

    “Lives…” He scoffs, but Crowley is undeterred.

 

    “What have we got to show for them? What memories do we keep?”

 

    Aziraphale frowns. Of course… he’s already forgotten one old life, why shouldn’t he want to be remembered, and in a form he could keep to remember himself by? To… to have the security, even if he’s unlikely to need it…

 

    “If I had an ounce of artistic sensibility, I’d draw you.” He says, for what it’s worth… “Er-- not in exchange for anything. Just… I mean-- just so you could have something, that’s all.”

 

    “If I had an ounce of sensibility in general, I wouldn’t let you…” Crowley laughs softly. “I might forget myself and try to pay you with a kiss.”

 

    “I hardly think…” Aziraphale huffs.

 

    Just as he’d known he would… of course the idea is distasteful to him, it couldn’t be anything else. Crowley never let himself imagine.

 

    “Forget about it. One of these days I’ll find a poet eager to give this devil his due.”

 

    “Crowley…” Aziraphale starts, though he has no idea where to go from there. Only that Crowley’s smile seems tired. He wishes he knew how to make it not so. Would that he could bid him sit and rest a while, would that he could put a warm meal before him, would that he could massage his temples and soothe him, but…

 

    But Crowley has been sitting, after all, and only just rose. Crowley doesn’t need food, nor particularly yearn for it, beyond a single bite. And to reach for him like that, to touch him, when he has not asked for comfort or admitted weariness… that is beyond the bounds.

 

    “I know, I know. I am a vain beast and you can’t possibly approve.” He chuckles. “Every day you’re forced to put up with my nonsense, you wonder why you hadn’t just--”

 

    “Crowley, please.” Aziraphale stops him, face heating. “No. I just… Are you well?”

 

    “Yeah. Course.”

 

    “All right. All right.”

 

    “You staying?”

 

    He shakes his head. “I don’t need a bed for the night.”

 

    “Oh. Right. Roof over your head?”

 

    “No. I’ve got my orders.”

 

    “I’ll take it. My turn.” Crowley nods.

 

    “No, no-- I have to take this one personally. Monastery. Er… just letting you know where I’ll-- And of course I can…”

 

    “All right, well I’ll owe you a big one, then. Or-- when you get back, I’ll take you out. Thought there weren’t any more of those.”

 

    “Overseas. It’s a five year posting, there’s reconstruction going on in the area and...” He bites his lip. “I’ll do you one quick one in a week. A monk. _Very_ minor. But… Anyway, then you can carry on as usual. But I-- I’d like that. When I get back.”

 

    “Dinner?”

 

    “Best not.” His face heats even further. “The theatre?”

 

    “Yeah Of course, sure. I’d like that. Also. Er… safe flight.”

 

    “Thank you.”

 

    For a moment they simply stand there, in a bubble of their own as life carries on, as everyone in the tavern forgets them, more or less.

 

    “Well.” Aziraphale coughs. “Goodbye.”

 

    He turns on his heel and hurries out.

 

\---/-/---

 

    Crowley gives up on the seduction game, alters his look a bit into something more comfortable. He writes a letter to Aziraphale at Maroilles. Aziraphale hadn’t named the monastery, or even the country, but Crowley writes him there anyway.

 

    He addresses it to a man who doesn’t exist, an alias last used so long ago, a place he sees sometimes in his dreams, from the outside.

 

    _My most dear angel_ , he writes, and tears away the top of the page.

 

    _Angel,_

_You’ve no idea the daily torments I face back home. Kit Marlowe had best hope your side takes him, for I will have nothing to do with him anymore. Do you know how that man repaid my every kindness? He wrote a play about_ _Mephistopheles_ _, I am livid beyond reason. Also, he has died._

_You will excuse my being petty for my nature is not as yours, but he might have written a play about the demon Crowley just as easily. He might have made it a very good part with many pretty lines. And he might have asked me anything in return, and he might be alive today, and of course I have nothing to do with the fact he isn’t, you will understand that, but angel, he might have written about_ _me_ _._

_Will is as good I think. And I have been trying to convince him to also write a play about a demon. I have offered to tell him any sort of story for inspiration as he likes. And he might tack on an awful ending which makes it moral, otherwise they should never let it be performed, but I don’t care about that, so long as the middle part is good. I am so much more interesting than Mephistopheles, who is an utter bore. He doesn’t even know the first thing about plays, I’ll bet, and won’t care he’s got one, except he’d be glad he does and I haven’t, so I’m certainly not about to tell him._

_You may write to me in care of the tavern where last we met as I often take a room there, on the off chance that my letter should reach you._

_I do remain yours_

 

    He doesn’t sign it. He doesn’t need to. He folds it, and presses his finger a moment to the spot where he will drip wax to seal it-- even if someone other than Aziraphale did try to open it, it won’t yield to someone else’s hand now.

 

    The candles in the room he’s taken are white, but a thought fixes that. He contemplates red, and settles on black. Presses the ring he’d given himself into the soft wax, leaving a coiled serpent impressed upon the seal.

 

    He doesn’t expect to hear back, when he pays a courier to see it’s delivered. He doesn’t expect Aziraphale really is at Maroilles. How could he be? And yet, a letter comes to him before Aziraphale does.

 

    _My dear Crowley,_

_But how did your letter find me? I am sure I never said where I would be. I wish now that I had, and you might have written me sooner, or at least with more confidence. Only we have never written before unless we needed to send word about the work… But it is pleasant to hear from you, and it cheers me to receive a letter._

_I am sorry to hear about Mr. Marlowe. You needn’t be heartless towards him, it’s not as if he meant it as a personal slight. It’s down to your influence he’s written a play about a demon at all, no doubt. But good luck in being paid proper tribute to, I suppose._

_I do wish you were here sometimes. Not ‘here’, where I write you from in the abbey, of course, for it should be most painful to you, but nearby, where we might walk and speak sometimes. I know we have not been apart for very long at all, and I am being silly and sentimental, but everything looks so different now. I go past the place where we once lived and I wonder how long it has been gone… if anyone living here now remembers a time when it stood. But the tree we once sat beneath still stands, and I have sat beneath it again, alone, and felt the lack of you. I have heard the hum of the bees and the babbling of the water, and the rustle of a leaf, and missed your snore emerging from a bed of wildflowers. But I shall be back in England soon. With any luck, someone will have written you a play and then you may take me to see it and I shall allow you a night to be insufferable._

_You must forgive me for having not done a very good job at tempting, but even though the monk in question did not give in, he did spend a very agonized night considering leaving his order all together, I am sure they will still think it a noble effort! (an ignoble effort? You can say that you had done your best and caused some suffering) I feel simply awful for it, but it was honestly done, my dear._

_Ever yours_

_Aziraphale_

 

    Crowley hardly knows how he should feel, holding the reply in his hands. Had it been jotted down quickly without overthinking? Had Aziraphale labored over every word?

 

    Was that little one-room cottage long gone? Or was it destroyed more recently, when war touched the area? And did Aziraphale ever think back on those things that sometimes tumble through Crowley’s dreams? Did he recall the taste of honey and did he think of Crowley when he did? But these are things he can’t ask.

 

    _Angel_

_A lucky guess. But I am sorry the cottage is not there. I’d have liked to have seen it again, if it had been. I never think about such things until they are gone, but it’s always the way. You go back to a place you have known and time has changed it. Every bee I cared for is long dead, even if their descendants still hum away. The people we knew, too. Even stone’s not safe forever, is it?_

_But I grow morbid on you, and I hadn’t meant to. I’m not, really. I haven’t been preoccupied with thoughts of all that is impermanent at all, I have only been glad to have found you. And you might accuse me of sending letters to all the monasteries I know, but I swear it was only the one. Both are true, in fact, because it was the only monastery I could think of that was perhaps still in operation. I suppose on the continent there are many, but I don’t know them._

_Your Demon_

 

    They write back and forth a few times, after that. They don’t always have much to say. Still, it’s nice… could they make a habit of this? Maybe it’s silly, when they’ll see each other so soon, but Crowley likes it. He likes getting word from Aziraphale. It makes being apart seem less. And when he gets the letter he’s been waiting for, it may yet be early to make solid plans, but he finds himself thinking on them just the same...

 

    _My dear Crowley_

_Do not bother to write me again for I shall be in London before it ever reaches me, but I was glad to receive your last reply._

_It makes me wish we could always write each other thus, when I think of how pleasant it has been to send letters back and forth, but that is hardly the nature of the job. Whoever goes away will rarely be set up in a place where letters can be reliably received, and whoever stays may suffer the same problem…_

_I think again about a home, as I once had. Something which might be permanent for a while, if not forever. But who knows when that shall come about… You may tease me for it if I am being ridiculous, but please do not tease me overmuch if I have felt nostalgic being once more in this place._

_Your Angel_

 

    He wants to know what it all means, the bits that aren’t straightforward. Perhaps it’s all straightforward. He wants to know if Aziraphale misses what they had shared. He already knows that when he sees him, he will not ask.

 

\---/-/---

 

    “I’ve got us theatre seats.” Crowley ducks out of the shadows as he sees Aziraphale pass, capturing his arm. He’d blended into them well, dressed all in black velvet, lenses shielding his eyes and a cloak covering the gleam of silver buttons. His hair is darker again, suiting him better than his brief foray into more golden hues.

 

    “Crowley!” Aziraphale glows at the sight of him, looking so very himself once more, and so very welcome for it. “I was coming to find you!”

 

    “Were you now?”

 

    “I don’t know what else you think I’d be doing.” He says, and turns away, and blushes so prettily Crowley could almost pretend…

 

    “I don’t know. When you came back to Florence, I wasn’t your first visit.”

 

    “And yet I did find you on my first visit. Had I gone to your rooms, I would have been waiting for you.”

 

    “Yes, and for quite some time, if there was no pressing appointment to kick me out over… Those were-- those were fine days, though, Florence. And in only a couple years I suppose it’s another new century.”

 

    “Goodness, how the time does fly, but it is. Three years to the next. I can’t even speculate as to what it shall bring us.”

 

    Crowley halts them, before Aziraphale can plant his foot down into the mud. Trust an angel to never dress for mud-- pale gold-colored shoes, bright white hose, how it hasn’t already been spattered with the stuff… How much time must he spend miracling it off of himself? Wearing nothing but whites and creams and golds, save the moss green lining of his cloak. A little flash of the earthly, hidden beneath shades of the celestial.

 

    As for cloaks, Crowley sweeps off his own, laying it over the puddle before Aziraphale can even protest, grinning at the way it flusters him. Let any man who would be a lover do less, he thinks, and see what it gets him. He can never ask to be a lover, but he can be allowed some things. He can be allowed this.

 

    “Oh-- _really_ , dear, but that’s-- My!” Aziraphale shakes his head, fighting a smile. He steps so lightly over the cloak that he hardly dents it down into the mud, one hand poised on Crowley’s arm. “Do your people not make a fuss about throwing miracles around? Cleaning up after these things, I mean.”

 

    “Angel, all it is is a miracle. It never existed until I asked it to.” He snaps his fingers and the cloak vanishes. “If Hell wanted to complain about me popping my clothes in and out of existence, they’d work out expenses. And a place to keep the clothing. They don’t care what I do. As long as the job gets done.”

 

    “Oh.” He chuckles nervously. “My side… can be sticklers for these things. A bit.”

 

    “Yes, that sounds about right.”

 

    “You said we have _seats_?” Aziraphale changes the subject. “You shouldn’t have.”

 

    “You tempted a monk for me.” He grins. “I had to do something.”

 

    “Well, I tried.”

 

    “Close enough.”

 

    They reach the theatre, and they settle onto their bench, before too many others join them. Space is at something of a premium. They’re pressed close, thigh to thigh, arm to arm, but it’s all right. Aziraphale is warm, and it’s not a cold day, but Crowley usually feels a chill in the shade.

 

    Aziraphale is _comfortable_. Were the play abysmal, he could lay his head on a soft, rounded shoulder and sleep, and feel quite safe. He thinks Aziraphale might even let him. He doesn’t expect the play to be abysmal, but the option stands.

 

    “Do you want anything? Wine or-- or anything?” Crowley whispers, trying to catch the eye of a wandering vendor, but Aziraphale shushes him, already enraptured by the opening speech.

 

    Crowley is distracted a moment longer, by the thought that he could buy something, that he could… but no. Aziraphale trusts him not to tempt him into something personal, something he knows he doesn’t want. If he breaks that, he’s just…

 

    Just some demon. Just an enemy, a cruel one, because he’s won Aziraphale’s trust.

 

    He settles in to pay attention to the play proper, enjoying the wordplay-- some filthy jokes right off the bat, that’s always good. Aziraphale sniffs disapprovingly at a jest about taking maidenheads, but he titters behind his hand at a dick joke.

 

    The sword-fighting is good. The sighing swain less compelling.

 

    “Is there anything less interesting in all the world,” Crowley whispers into Aziraphale’s ear. “Than a story about a youth in love with a maiden?”

 

    “Hush.” Aziraphale taps at his arm, and Crowley hushes.

 

    Of his own volition, mind, and not for being told. But there really is nothing else to say about it.

 

    And then in the fifth scene, the stupid boy forgets the first girl entirely, and Crowley would love to be put off further by it, except he turns to Aziraphale to complain about such caprice, only to see the way his attention is fixed upon the stage, and…

 

    And the way he places his hand over his heart as the young lovers engage in wordplay, the teasing pursuit, the playful rebuff. The soft-whispered ‘oh’ as they despair at learning each other’s identities, and…

 

    And maybe this had sprung from Crowley’s own drunken ramblings. _That I must love a loathed enemy_ …

 

    He listens to every word now, and watches Aziraphale. Watches the way his fingertips press at his lips when she says ‘I should have been more strange’. Watches each smile and each frown.

 

    For two hours, he watches Aziraphale watch the play-- excepting the sword fights, which he does turn to enjoy.

 

    It ends sadly, of course. He supposes he should have known.

 

    “You find it affecting.” He offers Aziraphale a hand up, after the actors have taken their bows. “But then… you always have.”

 

    “It was very well done. I wish they could have been happy…”

 

    “Not everyone gets to be. It’s why we have stories, isn’t it? Little lessons on human nature.”

 

    “Mm… yes, well. Best to learn a hard lesson from a play than bitter experience. Still… if only they could have… I don’t know. If their plan had worked.”

 

    “You think _that’s_ a happy ending?” Crowley scoffs. “If he’d damned her to the life of an exile for love of him?”

 

    “Yes. They’d be alive, for a start.”

 

    “At what cost?”

 

    “Don’t _say_ that!” Aziraphale stops short, halting their exit, looks so shocked, so upset, that Crowley can hardly understand what he could have said wrong. His confusion must be writ plain enough, Aziraphale sighs and shakes his head, and his lip wobbles just so. “Don’t-- don’t say that. About… exile. It isn’t-- You don’t _think_ that. You _mustn’t_!”

 

    “No, angel.” He murmurs, tugging him to move along, to let the others in their stall leave, too. “I don’t believe that.”

 

    They wind up wandering, aimless, waiting for some tavern or other to speak more loudly, for some side street to call their names.

 

    When the sun begins to sink, Aziraphale removes his cloak, and drapes it over Crowley’s shoulders.

 

    “You gave yours up for me.” He shrugs, his smile soft.

 

    “I owed you one. From ages back.”

 

    “Still. You’ll get a chill.”

 

    Crowley nods and accepts the loan, though it’s clear the thing goes with Aziraphale’s outfit and not his own. The lining is a lovely shade of green…

 

\---/-/---

 

    The year after Aziraphale’s return, and their afternoon at the theatre, Crowley takes him to a comedy. They’d both rather enjoyed it much more-- the lovers all ended happily, and the wordplay was even better. And then they had both traveled, but for the turn of the century…

 

    For the turn of the century, they meet in Edo.

 

    “Have you tried namanare?” Aziraphale asks, as they settle in at a restaurant table. “I had it nearer the beginning of the century. It’s nice. It didn’t… it wasn’t too much, but it was nice. A bit like that dish you told me about once.”

 

    “Didn’t exist when I was here last.” Crowley shakes his head. “I’ll try it.”

 

    Aziraphale orders for them both, watching with excitement as Crowley gives it a nibble, curiosity giving way to enjoyment.

 

    “Do you like it?”

 

    “Yeah. Here-- don’t let me take all of it.” He pushes the plate towards Aziraphale, as if there were any danger of that, with their respective appetites.

 

    Not that Aziraphale wants to have appetites. _An_ appetite. Just the one sort. But Crowley watches him from behind those dark glasses, and he feels pinned in place, feels _different_. He feels so much more aware of the flavors, the textures. Reawakened to the heady pleasure of eating.

 

    He chews slowly, carefully, he can do this, he doesn’t have to wolf it all down in a quest for _more_. And yet it only makes the pleasure keener and more unavoidable, only makes him yearn for the next.

 

    “You should--” He pushes the plate back towards Crowley, taste heavy on his tongue even after he’s swallowed, pressing on him, working at him. Intoxicating him. Crowley’s hand stops the plate’s journey, though, and Aziraphale feels himself weaken, lets it be pushed back his way.

 

    “No.” Crowley says, quick, almost hoarse. “I mean-- You go on. I don’t enjoy it the way you do, I don’t think-- I mean… I like small tastes.”

 

    “I shouldn’t. Enjoy it like this.”

 

    “Oh.” Crowley looks between Aziraphale and the plate, the slight tilt of his head to allow Aziraphale to know where his eyes rest when he can’t see them. “We’ll each take another?”

 

    “That sounds very fair.” Aziraphale nods, and they reach for them at once, slow, as if moving through water at first, until their hands close around the rice, until they lift the two namanare from the plate, and Crowley touches his to Aziraphale’s with a crooked smile.

 

    “Cheers.” He says, and Aziraphale laughs softly. “We should-- er. Enjoy them.”

 

    He’s not sure that’s what Crowley was going to say, but he can’t guess at what it might have been that has his shoulders coming up a little, has his smile faltering.

 

    “Yes. Erm… enjoy.” He smiles-- awkwardly-- in return, watching Crowley, being watched…

 

    He’s not sure how intentional it is, when they time their bites to each other. Only that it happens.

 

    Aziraphale sighs. Crowley moans.

 

    Heat floods him, and yet he can’t turn away, isn’t sure where he would even turn to, or why. Not until he’s swallowed, and Crowley swallows after, audibly.

 

    They wind up on a rooftop, with wine, to wait on midnight, and for a long time they’re silent there.

 

    “Moon’s lovely.” Crowley says at last.

 

    “I suppose. It’s only grey.”

 

    “It’s _silver_.” He grins, and pours out two cups-- cups which hadn’t existed a moment ago. “Which happens to be… among my favorite colors. Third, I think. Here’s to the next hundred.”

 

    “Here’s to the next hundred.” Aziraphale echoes, clinking the rim of his cup to Crowley’s. “It’s… it’s been a nice century, overall. Hasn’t it?”

 

    “Yeah, has been. Here’s to a better one-- it’s all uphill since the fourteenth century anyway.”

 

    Aziraphale laughs, and sips at his wine. Plum wine, like the wine he’d made, back when he’d had plums… well, better than what he’d made, he thinks, but close enough to fill him with nostalgia.

 

    “I think… I think I’d like to settle down again.” He says. “One of these days.”


End file.
